1 


F 

161 


THE  IRON  TRAIL. 


A    SKETCH. 


BY  A.  C.  WHEELER, 
(The  "NYM  CRINKLE  "  of  the  N.    V.    World, 


We've  sought  them  where  in  warmest  nooks 

The  freshest  feed  is  growing, 
By  sweetest  springs,  and  clearest  brooks, 

Through  honeysuckle  flowing; 
Wherever  hillsides  sloping  south 

Are  bright  with  early  grasses, 
Or,  tracking  green  the  lowland's  drouth, 

The  mountain  streamlet  passes. 

— WHITTIER. 


NEW    YORK. 

F.   B.   PATTERSON,   PUBLISHER. 

1876. 


I? 


WHY. 

I,  too,  with  my  soul  and  body. 
We,  a  curious  trio,  picking,  wandering  on  our  way 
Through  these  shores,  amid  the  shadows,  with 
The  apparitions  pressing. 
Pioneers,  O  Pioneers ! 

— WALT  WHITMAN. 

"ARE  we  Americans,  or  are  we  not?     That's  what  I'd  like  to  know,"  cried  June. 

June's  my  sister. 

She  had  jumped  upon  her  big  Saratoga  trunk,  and  had  unconsciously  assumed  the  attitude 
of  the  little  corporal  when  he  stormed  the  bridge  of  Lodi. 

"  We  are!"  I  cried. 

"Then,"  said  June,  "  where  are  we  going?  That's  the  next  thing  I'd  like  to  know.  Where 
are  we  going  TO  ?" 

Now  she  had  unconsciously  assumed  the  attitude  of  the  stump  speaker  in  the  minstrel  band. 

"Why,  of  course  we'll  go  to  Europe,"  I  said.  "Breathes  there  an  American  with  soul  so 
dead  as  to  stay  in  his  own  country  when  there's  a  Centennial  ?  " 

"  I  should  hope  not,"  cried  Ben,  who  had  just  come  in. 

Ben's  my  large  brother.  He  stands  six-feet  two;  weight,  210  pounds;  eyes  blue;  hair 
shaved  short;  manners  bluff;  style  generally  A  I. 

"  The  thing  for  us  to  do  is  the  steam  yacht  business.  Lay  in  a  cargo  of  canned  fruits,  take  a 
grand  piano,  confectionery,  fire-works,  French  cook,  brass  band,  touch  at  Newport  on  the  way 
out,  Banks  of  Newfoundland,  icebergs,  saluted  by  English  steamers,  run  into  Cowes  on  the 
other  side,  go  up  to  Lord  Dunderhead's  castle,  return  ball  on  board  next  night,  Empress  of 
India  and  the  President  of  the  United  States  drunk  standing,  then  up  the  Mediterranean,  sweep 
in  the  whole  of  the  historic  sea  from  Gibraltar  to  Greece,  salute  the  flags  of  all  nations,  flirt  with 
the  women  of  all  climes,  write  our  names  on  everything  that's  exposed,  load  up  with  cashmere 
shawls,  old  masters,  mummies,  cheap  statuary,  come  back  when  the  Centennial  is  all  over,  cele 
brated,  satisfied,  triumphant !  Eh  !  What  ?" 

"  Stop  a  moment,"  said  June,  "  I  want  to  hug  you." 

"Don't  hug  me,"  replied  Ben;  "  go  and  hug  the  Governor;  that's  where  the  pressure  must 
be  applied;  it'll  take  from  ten  to  fifteen  thousand  dollars." 

"  Is  that  all  ?  "  said  the  dear  girl.  "  Why,  it's  dirt  cheap.  It  costs  more  than  that  to  go  to 
Paris,  don't  it?" 

"  Yes,  if  there's  women  in  the  party." 

"At  all  events,"  continued  June,  sitting  down  on  her  trunk  and  assuming  a  meditative  look, 
"we  must  go  somewhere.  This  is  the  first  time  in  five  years  that  we  haven't  had  our  route 
made  up  before  the  first  of  April.  Do  you  know  that  this  delay  is  awful?  If  any  thing  should 
happen  to  keep  us  in  New  York  all  summer,  I  should  never  cease  to  upbraid  myself  for  my 
crime  and  folly  to  my  latest  breath." 

"  My  dear  June,"  I  remarked,  "  that's  an  absurd  supposition  ;  whatever  happens,  that  need 
not  take  place." 


"Why  not?" 

"  Because  we  can  always  hang  ourselves  or  go  to  Long  Branch,  and  thus  at  one  sublime  cou£ 
avoid  New  York  and  the  annoyance  of  waiting  for  our  latest  breath." 

The  mention  of  Long  Branch  brought  on  a  general  laugh.  It  always  does.  I  suppose  it  is 
because  none  of  us  ever  go  there,  and  can  afford  to  laugh. 

We  had  a  little  council  of  war.  Ben  was  self-confident,  cynical,  and  extravagant.  June  was 
suspicious,  anxious,  and  oratorical.  I  was  patient,  wise  and  sweet-tempered,  as  I  always  am. 

"  My  American  character  urges  me  to  action,"  said  June,  "  and  my  woman's  instinct  tells  me 
there  is  need  of  it  at  once." 

"What  does  your  woman's  instinct  see  in  the  way  ?"  asked  Ben. 

"  Men,"  replied  June.  "  Oh,  if  Governors  and  brothers  were  only  women,  there  would  be  no 
trouble,  no  delay,  no  doubts.  We'd  fly  to  Paris  without  a  thought  or  an  argument." 

"And  come  back  without  a  red." 

"Go  and  see  the  head  of  the  family,"  continued  the  girl.  "If  we  can't  have  a  yacht,  we 
must  at  least  have  three  state-rooms ;  and  we  must  have  them  at  once.  Remember  the  adage, 
Procrastination  is  the — what  do  ye  call  it  of  something." 


BUFFALO  TRAILS    IN  WESTERN   KANSAS. 

"  Oh,  that's  all  right,"  said  Ben,  in  his  princely  way.  «•'  I'll  go  in,  see  the  Governor  and 
arrange  for  the  state-rooms.  Let  me  see,  it's  now  the  eighth  of  April  (looking  at  his  watch  as 
if  it  were  a  calendar).  We'll  start  about  the  first  of  May.  I'd  like  to  be  in  the  Tyrol  in 
June.  Wouldn't  you  ?" 

"  Anywhere,  anywhere,  as  Hood  says,  out  of  the  etcetera,"  replied  the  pride  of  the  family, 
pushing  him  out. 

"The  truth  is,"  she  said  to  me  when  Ben  was  gone,  "I  must  have  something  to  do.  I'm 
stagnating." 

Health,  fashion,  comfort,  patriotism,  honor,  duty,  all  say  we  must  go  abroad. 

So  it  was  all  fixed.     We  had  put  our  heads  together.     Now  we  would  join  hands. 

Was  there  ever  a  Governor  that  did  not  fall  before  such  a  combination  ? 

"  Never,"  I  cried,  as  I  took  a  nosegay  out  of  June's  hair  and  put  it  in  my  button-hole,  prepar 
atory  to  walking  down  Broadway. 


WHERE. 

The  great  South-western  Railroad 

For  Colorado,  hail ! 
Bring  on  your  locomotive 

And  lay  down  your  iron  rail. 
Across  the  rolling  prairies 

By  steam  we're  bound  to  go. 
The  railcoad  cars  are  coming — humming 

Through  New  Mexico. 

THE  Governor  had  it  in  his  leg.  Ordinarily,  when  it  took  him  in  the  shoulder,  we  could  get 
along  with  him ;  when  it  settled  in  his  side,  we  grinned  and  bore  it,  for  we  knew  that  it  would 
pass  over  with  the  first  bright,  dry  day.  But  when  he  had  it  in  his  leg,  it  generally  staid  there 
until  the  housekeeper  gave  notice,  and  life  no  longer  offered  any  charms  to  the  cook  or  the  chamber 
maid,  and  we  had  to  watch  June  to  prevent  her  from  flinging  herself  head  first  into  her  Saratoga 
trunk,  and  letting  the  lid  down  with  a  snap. 

When  he  had  it  in  his  leg  he  was,  to  put  it  mildly,  transformed  from  a  benevolent  and  serene 
patriarch,  into  a  howling  and  inconsiderate  tyrant. 

He  had  it  in  his  leg  now,  and  we  had  not  yet  discovered  it. 

We  gathered  at  the  breakfast  table,  smiling  and  happy.  June  looked  at  Ben.  Ben  nodded 
and  intimated  that  the  thing  was  safe  in  his  hands.  Then  he  opened  the  matter  boldly. 

"See  here,"  said  he,  suddenly,  "if  we're  going  abroad  this  summer,  we'd  better  be  getting 
ready ;  the  passages  ought  to  be  taken  and  arrangements  made  !" 

The  Governor  looked  over  the  top  of  his  paper.  He  was  a  little  blue  under  the  eyes,  and 
purple  about  the  end  of  his  nose,  and  white  about  the  lips. 

"  Who  says  we're  going  abroad  ?"  he  shouted  fiercely.     "  Show  me  the  man !" 

Ben  opened  his  blue  eyes  wide.  June  gave  a  little  gasp,  as  if  she  already  saw  herself 
consigned  to  Long  Branch  and  infamy. 

"If  you've  got  such  a  notion  as  that  in  your  heads,"  he  added,  looking  at  all  of  us  with 
devouring  rage,  "  you're  all  abroad  now !" 

Then  the  housekeeper  fled  trembling  out  of  the  room.  A  horrid  silence  fell  upon  the  group, 
which  was  not  broken  by  the  husky  whisper  of  June  in  Ben's  ear. 

"  Merciful  heavens  !  he's  got  it  in  his  leg." 

To  which  Ben,  in  a  desperate  sort  of  way,  replied,  "  I'm  afraid  he  has,  and  I've  got  it  square 
between  the  eyes.  I  wish  you'd  have  me  carried  out !" 

Presently  the  Governor,  seeing  us  at  his  mercy,  and  actuated  by  the  malign  spirit  of  his  leg, 
returned  to  the  subject. 

THE    GOVERNOR   MAKES   AN   INHUMAN   AND    INCENDIARY   SPEECH. 

"  You're  a  nice  lot  of  Americans,  aren't  you  ?  Never  live  in  your  own  country  long  enough 
to  know  anything  about  it.  I'm  ashamed  of  you.  Fine  exhibition  for  the  centennial  year. 


You'd  like  to  drag  me  to  Italy  again  and  have  me  down  with  the  Roman  fever,  wouldn't  you  ? 

When  I've  got  a  thousand  acres  of  paradise  myself,  where  the  wicked  cease  from  troubling  and 

the  gouty  are  at  rest.     If  you've  got  money  enough  among  you,  why  go  to  Italy — go  to  thunder. 

But  I  tell  you  I'm  going  to  stay  inside  the  Republic  this  year.     There,  that'll  do  on  that  subject. 

I  don't  want  to  hear  a  word  more." 

"But,"  said  June,  horror  struck,  "  you  don't  think  seriously  of  staying  in — in  New  York?" 
"  Don't  I !  "  he  shouted.     "  If  I  didn't  think  seriously,  who  the  deuce  would  in  this  family? 

No,  I'm  not  going  to  stay  here.     I'm  going — " 
We  all  held  our  breaths. 

"I'M  GOING  TO  COLORADO!" 


THE  MOST  PROMINENT  BUILDING   IN   A   KANSAS  TOWN. 


W  HEN. 

And  in  thy  right  hand  lead  with  thee, 

The  mountain  nymph,  sweet  Liberty, 
And,  if  I  give  thee  honor  due, 

Mirth,  admit  me  of  thy  crew. 

— MILTON. 

AT  first  we  were  stunned.  Then  we  settled  into  a  despairing  anger.  Then  we  began  to  re 
cover  our  senses. 

"  Going  to  Colorado  !"  said  June.  "  Why,  he'll  have  to  travel  on  a  dromedary.  It's  part  of 
the  Great  American  desert.  It  was  that  Doctor  Lavender  who  put  this  notion  into  his  head." 

"Oh,  he'll  get  over  it  in  a  few  clays,"  remarked  Ben,  with  a  great  effort  at  carelessness. 

But  he  didn't.  He  hung  to  Colorado  with  the  tenacity  of  a  catamount  and  much  of  its 
ferocity. 

The  result  was  something  that  no  human  being  could  have  foreseen. 

In  the  first  place,  June,  who  had  tried  in  vain  to  win  the  Doctor  over  and  failed,  suddenly 
veered  clear  round  and  came  out  enthusiastically  for  Colorado  herself. 

In  the  second  place,  she  won  both  Ben  and  myself  over  to  her  views.  And  we  all  went  to 
Colorado. 

To  tell  how  this  astonishing  girl  accomplished  all  this  would  compel  me  to  write  an  essay  on 
the  illimitable  female  resources. 

Her  first  step  was  in  the  direction  of  the  Governor.  She  got  some  kind  of  an  emotional 
lever  under  him.  But  for  the  first  time  it  failed  to  move  him. 

"  It's  no  use,"  he  said,  "  I've  got  to  carry  my  leg  somewhere  into  a  climate  that  will  subdue 
it.  An  ocean  voyage  is  worse  than  the  rack.  I  want  the  sky  of  Italy,  the  air  of  Switzerland, 
the  scenery  of  Norway,  the  water  of  Ems,  the  society  of  Nature — I  can't  get  them  anywhere  but 
in  Colorado,  and  there  I'm  going." 

Seeing  that  he  was  immovable,  she,  like  a  true  woman,  ceased  her  assault  and  established  an 
alliance. 

" Somebody's  got  to  go  with  him,"  she  said, to  Ben  and  me.  "It  will  never  do  to  let  him  go 
alone,  for  if  he  escapes  the  Indians,  grizzly  bears  and  border  ruffians,  he  will  be  sure  to  fall  into 
the  pitiless  clutch  of  some  wild  Western  widow — and  then  what  would  life  be  worth  to  us,  I'd 
like  to  know?  Somebody  has  got  to  be  sacrificed — as  usual  it  is  a  woman.  I'll  go  with  him." 
[Tears.] 

When  woman  sets  an  example  of  heroism  in  her  vital,  impulsive  way,  man  takes  off  his  coat 
lumberingly  and  imitates  her. 

"  By  Heavens  !"  said  Ben,  "you  shall  not  expose  yourself  to  the  horrors  of  Col3rado  unpro 
tected,  so  long  as  you  have  a  brother.  If  you  must  do  this  insane  thing,  I  shall  not  let  you  go 
alone.  A  man  can  die  but  once." 


8 

"No!  No  !"  cried  June,  "  your  life  is  worth  too  much  to  the  world.  It  cannot  spare  you. 
Let  me  perish  alone.  I  shall  never  be  missed." 

"  Not  if  I  know  myself,"  said  Ben.  "  If  there  is  any  wild  Western  perishing  to  be  done,  I 
must  be  counted  in.  I  shall  commence  practicing  with  the  bow  and  arrows  at  once,  and  saturat 
ing  myself  with  quinine." 

"It  will  never  do  to  break  up  the  family  in  that  way,"  I  began.  "  Whatever  we  do,  let  us 
all  stick  together — especially  in  a  misfortune  of  this  kind.  I  shall  go  too." 

Having  accomplished  this  much,  what  does  June  do  next  but  throw  herself  into  the  Colorado 
business,  heart  and  soul. 

For  instant  and  complete  adaptation  to  any  emergency,  I  would  back  that  girl  against  the 
world. 

She  laid  in  a  stock  of  maps,  gazetteers,  guide-books,  railroad  pamphlets  and  Western  news 
papers.  She  crammed,  she  inquired,  she  took  the  whole  tour  in  charge.  She  became  mistress 
of  the  situation. 

And  neither  Ben  nor  I  could  understand  it. 

The  utmost  we  could  do  was  to  submit. 

However,  I  noticed  that  Ben,  now  that  his  attention  was  called  to  it,  took  a  growing  interest 
in  the  great  American  wilderness  as  he  called  it.  Inquiries  about  Colorado  only  served  to 
awaken  in  him  fresh  curiosity,  and  he  went  about  talking  in  an  absurd  strain,  that  was  too  ironi 
cal  to  be  sincere,  and  too  ridiculous  to  be  offensive,  about  the  glorious  freedom  of  the  Alkali 
Plains,  the  health-giving  sports  of  the  bottom  lands,  and  the  indescribable  delight  there  was 
in  going  beyond  the  reach  of  civilization,  and  the  sound  of  the  church-going  what  d'ye  call  it,  as 
June  phrased  it. 

So  it  was  finally  all  settled  that  we  were  to  start  for  Colorado  on  the  I2th. 

Several  days  were  given  up  to  preparation  ;  to  sad  farewells  ;  to  the  winding  up  of  a  thou 
sand  pretty  home  machines  that  were  expected  to  run  till  we  came  back ;  to  the  making  of  outfits ; 
to  the  answering  of  inquiries,  and  to  the  severing  of  the  ties  that  bound  us. 

The  Governor  had  his  life  insured,  and  made  anew  will  ;  he  also  sat  for  an  imperial  picture  at 
the  request  of  the  Board  of  Trustees  of  St.  Angelus'  Church,  and  June  laid  in  a  stock  of  albums 
and  other  rubbish. 

On  the  twelfth  of  April,  we  left  New  York  in  a  snow  storm,  a  rather  gloomy  party.  "  Rush 
ing"  June  said,  "to  the  what  d'ye  call  'ems,  that  we  know  not  of."  But,  at  any  rate,  leaving 
New  York. 


HOW? 

Yet  I  rejoice  ;  a  myrtle   fairer  than 
E'er  grew  in  Paphos,  from  the  bitter  weeds 
Lifts  its  sweet  head  into  the  air,  and  feeds 
A  silent  space  with  ever-sprouting  green. 

— KEATS. 

ON  the  fourteenth,  we  were  in  St.  Louis  for  the  first  time  in  our  lives. 

All  the  way  out,  the  Governor  had  been  the  wonder  and  delight  of  the  passengers  who  rev 
eled  in  strong  exhibitions  of  character.  His  leg  performed  the  most  amazing  feats ;  it  over 
turned  a  Pullman  car  conductor — a  thing  that  was  never  done  before ;  it  got  a  train-boy  into 
trouble ;  it  precipitated  a  political  quarrel  with  an  old  gentleman  in  the  next  section,  and  brought 
tears  to  the  eyes  of  June  more  than  once. 

The  only  breeze  of  comfort  the  poor  girl  got,  was  from  a  gentleman  by  the  name  of  Bellamy 
— introduced  to  our  party  at  the  start — who  assured  her  that  the  leg  would  be  born  again  if  it 
ever  reached  Colorado. 

Bellamy  was  a  young  Englishman — a  liberal,  full  of  his  country's  pluck  and  fiber,  and  a  for 
tunate  acquisition  to  our  party.  As  he  had  been  all  over  the  world,  and  liked  that  portion  of  it 
best  which  was  lying  at  the  base  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  was  cultivated,  handsome  and 
entertaining,  he  soon  became  an  accepted  member  of  our  group. 

One  incident  occurred  in  St.  Louis  that  is  worth  mentioning.  We  met  the  Dollipers  there — 
old  New  York  acquaintances.  The  Dolliper  used  to  be  considered  a  dashing  widow.  She  had 
gone  into  the  hemp  business  with  her  only  son,  and  had  quite  a  large  plantation  just  outside  the 
city.  We  found  the  town  quite  gay,  and  as  June  had  good  company,  there  did  not  appear  to  be 
any  immediate  prospect  of  leaving  it.  Ben  and  I  were  getting  tired  of  it  at  the  end  of  three 
days,  and  proposed  to  the  Governor  to  set  out  again.  To  our  amazement  he  said  he  had  con 
cluded  on  the  whole  to  remain  in  St.  Louis.  He  was  interested  in  some  experiments  in  the 
culture  of  hemp ;  we  could  go  on  without  him.  When  June  heard  this,  she  opened  her  blue  eyes 
wide. 

"  It's  the  Dolliper,"  said  she.  "  Haven't  you  noticed  the  Governor's  been  putting  pomatum 
on  his  hair?  Look  at  him,  there  he  comes!  He  got  a  new  hat!  That's  a  designing  woman. 
We  must  start  at  once." 

Exactly  how  she  managed  it,  neither  Ben  nor  I  never  knew,  but  manage  it  she  did,  and  we 
set  out  for  Kansas  City  the  next  day.  I  thought  the  Governor  looked  a  little  sheepish  as  if  he'd 
been  outwitted  or  reprimanded,  but  I  may  have  been  mistaken. 

Our  travels,  however,  began  at  Kansas  City.  From  that  point,  our  journey  was  an  entirely 
new  one,  and  eventful  enough  to  form  the  topic  of  my  book. 

Once  in  this  beautiful  city, — lying  in  the  exact  geographical  center  of  the  Republic, — a  double 
ray  of  sunshine  broke  upon  us.  First  of  all,  the  Governor  was  seen  to  smile.  Then  we  met 


10 


WHAT  THEY    DO   NOT  BELIEVE   EAST. 


with  genuine  spring  weather  that  had  a  smell  of  blossoms  in  it.     Something  in  the  air  stirred  us. 

June  broke  out  into  song,  and  Ben  wanted  to  buy  a  house. 

Bellamy  took  him  out  upon  the  bluffs  and  pointed  out  the  promised  land,  lying  in  green  levels 

as  far  as  color  and  beauty  were  discernible. 

"It  looks   like   wilderness   at  last,"   said   Ben.      '•  But   I'm   not   sure  of  it.      Something 

tells  me  we  shall  find  opera-houses  and  railroad  depots  where  we  expect  to  meet  savages  and 

silence.  I  despair  of  ever  getting  be 
yond  the  reach  of  paper  collars  and 
condensed  milk.  The  great  American 
wilderness  is  a  humbug. 

REMARKS    OF    BELLAMY   ON   METEOROL 
OGY. 

"  The  State  of  Kansas  is,  in  my  opin 
ion,  the  most  remarkable  evidence  of 
the  speed  and  splendor  of  your  civiliza 
tion,  anywhere  to  be  found  in  the  States. 
Kansas  is  only  eleven  years  old  as  a 
State,  and  twenty  years  ago,  you  were 
cutting  each  other's  throats  here  in  the 
most  approved  barbarism. 
"  I  believe  the  marvelous  growth  of  the  territory  into  a  garden  of  civilization  is  owing,  in  a 
great  measure,  to  the  air.  It  stimulates  the  inhabitants  just  as  it  does  vegetation.  If  it  had 
been  settled  by  Frenchmen  it  would  have  intoxicated  them.  We  should  have  had  a  new  republic 
in  every  county,  barricades  and  opera  bouffe  all  along  the  border,  and  the  beauty  and  chivalry 
of  the  great  West  quoting  Victor  Hugo,  guzzling  absinthe,  and  jumping  into  all  the  rivers  from 
mere  excess  of  animal  spirits.  But  these  Americans — do  you  know  how  they  utilize  all  this  fine 
air?  I'll  tell  you.  When  they  feel  exhilarated,  they  rush  out  and  turn  over  another  section  of 
wild  land.  If  the  spirit  of  the  air  moves  them  strongly,  they  put  up  another  school-house,  or 
stick  in  another  tree.  If  the  excitement  runs  high,  they  build  another  hundred  miles  of  railroad 
or  open  a  new  coal-mine. 

"  When  you  get  out  into  this  State,  you'll  see  the  water-mills  all  over,  by  which  every  zephyr  is 
made  to  add  to  the  productiveness  of  the  country.  It's  very  much  the  same  with  the  people. 
Every  ounce  of  oxygen  means  a  gallon  pumped  or  a  pound  raised." 

THE  AUTHOR  TAKES  UP  THE  THREAD. 

After  these  remarks,  Ben  said  he  felt  like  corroborating  them  by  raising  a  few  ounces  himself. 

Ben  is  of  a  jocular  turn. 

Bellamy,  on  the  contrary,  was  a  matter-of-fact  fellow,  whose  veins  were  full  of  statistics,  and 
whose  heart  beat  as  correctly  as  a  metronome. 

Coming  back  from  the  bluffs  to  the  hotel,  we  met  the  Governor,  surrounded  by  a  crowd  of 
evil-disposed  persons,  evidently  intent  upon  lynching  him.  Ben  felt  for  his  revolver.  But 
Bellamy  advised  him  to  hold  on.  As  we  came  up,  one  of  them  slipped  a  card  into  my  hand. 


II 


BEWARE    OF    THE    U.    P. 


"They  take  us  for  Massachusetts  men,"  I  cried,  "and  this  is  a  warning  not  to  start  a  U.  P. 
(Union  Press)  in  Kansas.  They're  border  ruffians." 

Another  of  the  fellows  got  hold  of  Ben.  "  Look  here,"  he  said,  "  didn't  you  come  by  the 
O.  R.  &P.  M.  P.  straight?" 

"  No,  sir,"  replied  Ben,  "  I  didn't  come  by  it  straight  or  crooked,  I  haven't  got  such  a  thing 
about  me,  haven't  seen  it,  don't  know  what  it  is." 

"Oh!   go  'way  and  let  the  gent  be,"  cried  another;  "don't  you  see  he's  a  K.  P." 

"  Gentlemen,"  observed  the  Governor,  with  dignity,  "  one  word  :  I  assure  you,  on  my  honor, 
we  are  not  K.  P.'s,  and  have  no  affiliation  with  U.  P.'s.  You  mistake  us  entirely,  we  have 
never  meddled  with  Ku  Klux  organizations  or  local  prejudices,  we  are  simply  traveling  for 
pleasure. 

"  Pleasure  !"  they  all  shouted  in  chorus.  "Ah  ha!  then  there's  only  one  thing  to  do  !"  And 
with  that  they  all  poked  their  circulars  into  our  faces. 

"Never  go  back  on  the  O.  R.  &  P.  M.  P.!" 
yelled  one. 

"  You'll  go  back  on  yourselves  if  you  don't 
patronize  the  F.  E.  &  W.  R.  St.  L.  K.  C.  &  N.  R. 
R. !"  screamed  another. 

This  last  eruption  of  Western  eloquence  over 
came  us,  and  we  fled  in  all  directions. 

The  Governor  took  refuge  in  a  drug  store,  where 
he  was  pursued  by  a  K.  P.,  who  committed  an  as 
sault  and  a  half-sheet  poster  on  him. 

Ben  got  safely  to  the  hotel  and  locked  his  door 
just  as  an  O.  R.  &.  P.  M.  P.  was  shoved  under  it. 

I  was  caught  on  a  corner,  and  four  of  them  held 
me,  while  a  fifth  read  to  me  the  horrors  of  the  U.  P. 

With  my  blood  curdling,  I  broke  into  Ben's 
room  afterward,  where  the  rest  of  our  party  had 
assembled,  and  exclaimed,  "  In  heaven's  name,  what 
does  this  mean — is  it  all  over  ?" 

"  Over,"  said  Ben,  summoning  all  his  Eastern 
wit,  "  why,  its  only  the  initial  trouble." 

"  Yes,  but  the  horrible  O.  R.  &  P.  M.  P.     It  may  at  any  moment  rise  up  in  our  path." 

"Not  unless  there's  a  freshet,"  said  Bellamy;  "it  only  means  the  'The  Old  Reliable  and 
Popular  Missouri  Pacific  Railroad.'  " 

June  broke  out  in  a  loud  laugh,  and  the  Governor  joined  her. 


A  GOOD  SIGN  ON  THE  PLAINS. 


12 

The  sight  of  his  merriment  put  us  all  in  excellent  spirits. 

"  But  we  must  go  by  one  of  these  railroads,  I  suppose,"  said  he ;   "  we'd  better  decide  at  once." 

REMARKS  BY  THE  REST  OF  THE  COMPANY. 

Ben.  The  way  to  go  to  Colorado  is  to  take  the  California  route,  Union  Pacific,  come  down  to 
Denver,  and  there  you  are. 

June.  That's  one  way.  Another  is  to  go  down  the  Mississippi,  and  come  up  through  Mexico 
on  pack-mules.  In  that  case,  the  more  haste  the  less — what  d'ye  call  it  ? 

Governor.  Boys,  give  me  that  map  of  the  United  States.     See  here,  that's  Colorado,  isn't  it  ? 

"  Yes,"  we  all  said,  bending  over  the  map. 

"Well,  that  green  square  is  Kansas,  isn't  it?     I  can't  see  very  well  without  my  glasses." 

"Yes,"  we  all  said. 

"Then,"  said  the  Governor,  taking  Ben's  pencil,  "I'll  show  you  my  route.  I'm  for  the  P.  & 
D.  W.  That  is — the  pleasantest  and  directest  way." 

With  that  he  drew  a  pretty  straight  line  from  Kansas  City,  on  the  Missouri,  to  Pueblo,  in 
Colorado. 

Ben.  Do  you  propose  to  build  a  road  for  our  party  ? 

Bellamy.    By  George,  he  won't  have  to.     There's  one  already.     It's  under  his  pencil  mark. 

General  pantomime  of  examination. 

Grand  Chorus.  It's  the  Atchison,  Topeka,  and  Santa  Fe  ! 

So  it  was. 

Governor.  You  forget  that  I  want  to  see  my  land,  and  the  only  way  to  see  it  is  to  go  where  it 
is.  Besides,  Southern  Kansas  is  in  about  the  same  latitude  as  Richmond,  Virginia.  Why  should 
I  take  my  leg  into  the  inhospitable  North  ?  Why,  you  innocent  youngsters,  did  you  ever  hear 
of  an  intelligent  party  coming  all  the  way  out  here,  without  finding  out  first  which  way  they  were 
going  ?  Do  you  suppose  I  hadn't  made  up  my  mind  before  I  left  New  York,  and  bought  our 
tickets  over  the  Atchison,  Topeka,  and  Santa  Fe  road  ?  I'm  an  M.  T.  D.  B.  T.  W. — that  is, 
a  man  that  don't  do  business  that  way.  Didn't  you  know  there  was  an  Eastern  agency 
on  the  corner  of  Broadway  and  Park  Place,  where  you  can  find  out  all  about  this  road  and 
its  Kansas  lands  ?" 

June.  Yes,  but  pa,  what  are  we  going  to  do  while  you  are  examining  your  land  ?  We  don't  want 
to  examine  land,  you  know. 

Ben.  No,  that  would  be  rather  absurd. 

Governor.  You  don't  want  to  do  anything  but  gad.  See  here,  you  blessed  runagates,  I'm 
going  to  offer  a  prize  to  the  one  who  makes  the  best  use  of  the  time.  I'm  going  to  set  an  example 
to  American  fathers  who  live  in  the  centennial  year.  I'll  give  the  two  thousand  acres  to  the  man 
or  woman  in  my  family  who  gets  up  the  most  information,  and  conies  out  of  the  West  knowing 
the  most  about  it. 

"  How's  that  for  an  offer,  Mr.  Bellamy  ?" 

Mr.  Bellamy.  A  very  liberal  offer,  sir,  in  my  opinion. 

Ben.  By  George !     What's  the  land  worth  ? 

Governor  (with  a  sly  twinkle'}.  Why,  that  comes  under  the  head  of  Western  information. 

June  (firing  up}.   Bought  at  $1.25  an  acre,  and  offered  at  $5.00. 


13 

Governor.  Well,  you  can't  have  it  for  $10.00. 

Ben.  But  you'll  make  it  a  present  to  one  of  us  ? 

Governor.   If  one  of  you  earns  it.     I  will,  by  Jove! 

When  the  Governor  used  this  rare  mythologic  oath,  we  knew — as  June  would  say — that  his 
word  was  as  good  as  his  what  d'ye  call  it. 

June.  But  we  needn't  hurry  away  from  Kansas  City,  need  we  ?  I'm  decidedly  in  favor  of 
moving  by  easy  stages  if  I  am  to  gather  information. 

This  conversation  put  a  new  face  on  affairs.  June  ransacked  the  town  for  agricultural  re 
ports,  and  that  night  we  found  her  at  the  hotel,  footing  up  figures  and  refusing  to  go  to  the  opera- 
house  and  see  Colonel  Sellers. 

Before  she  retired,  however,  a  letter  was  shown  her  from  the  Governor.     It  read  thus  : 


"  Hear  you  are  stopping  over  in  Kansas  City. 
Count  me  in  your  party. 


I'm  glad  of  it,  because  I  shall  overtake  you. 
OLIVE  DOLLIPER." 


"  Now,"  remarked  June,  "  as  I  said  before,  we  ought  to  hurry  away  from  here, 
to  see  the  West — why  waste  time  in  a  city  ?  " 


If  we  want 


THE  FIRST  FARM-SITE  SPECULATORS — PRAIRIE  DOGS. 


A    BLOSSOMING    WILDERNESS. 

Her  dark  dilating  eyes  expressed 

The  broad  horizons  of  the  West ; 
Her  speech  dropped  prairie  flowers :  the  gold 

Of  Harvest  wheat  about  her  rolled. 

— WHITTIER. 

THE  Atchison,  Topeka  &  Santa  Fe  Railroad,  which  is  comparatively  a  new  road,  has  two 
branches  leaving  the  Missouri  River  at  Kansas  City  and  at  Atchison.  These  branches  meet 
at  Topeka,  the  capital  of  the  State,  distant  sixty-six  miles  from  the  former,  and  fifty  miles  from 
the  latter  city. 

I  was  making  a  memorandum  of  this  in  my  book  as  we  were  leaving  Kansas  City.  June 
looked  over  my  shoulder. 

"  What  was  it  they  called  the  trick  of  getting  your  lesson  by  proxy,  when  you  went  to 
school  ?" 

"  Smouching,"  I  replied. 

"  Well,  that  isn't  a  pleasant  word.     Tell  me  about  the  railroad." 

"  Well,  that's  a  nice  proposition,"  I  exclaimed.     "  Such  amazing  impudence  is — " 

"  Is  allowable  only  in  a  sister." 

"  Well,"  I  said,  "  take  your  pencil.  The  road,  I  mean  this  road,  is  chiefly  remarkable  for 
its  route,  its  terminus  and  its  condition.  It  runs  through  the  garden  of  the  world,  presented  to 
it  by  the  United  States  of  America,  in  the  shape  of  a  land  grant,  which,  for  value,  has  never  been 
exceeded  by  any  similar  government  endowment.  It  comprises,  in  fact,  two  million,  five  hun 
dred  acres  of  land  lying  in  alternate  sections,  twenty  miles  each  side  of  the  route.  If  you 
want  to  know  what  kind  of  land  it  is  look  out  the  window." 

JUNE'S   LITTLE   RHAPSODY   ON    KANSAS. 

"  There's  something  peculiar  in  the  beauty  of  a  cultivated  prairie  that  baffles  description. 
The  level  lines  and  low  down  horizon  have  a  charm  that  is  unexpected.  In  the  first  place,  the 
colors  are  brighter  and  deeper  than  in  any  other  picture.  The  earth  shows  long  rich  patches  of 
blue-black  earth,  against  which  the  emerald  green  of  the  young  wheat-fields  gleams  with  a  rare 
brilliancy,  and  over  which  the  blue  sky — a  deep  unruffled  ultramarine — arches  itself  in  un 
obstructed  splendor.  Then  the  broad  unbroken  sunshine.  No  massed  shadows;  every  thing  in 
a  bath  of  brightness.  The  sense  of  space,  the  freedom  of  vision  and  the  constant  impression 
that  one  is  in  an  illimitable  mead,  and  that  motion  is  unaccompanied  by  exertion, — an  illusion 
due  in  great  measure  to  the  stimulating  air, — all  serve  to  make  the  charm  an  entirely  new  one, 
and  one  that  appeals  to  all  the  impulses  no  less  than  the  senses." 

"  That  will  never  do,"  I  said,  when  she  had  read  it  to  me. 

"Isn't  it  true?" 


"O  yes,  but  the  Governor  doesn't  want  the  true  and  beautiful.  He  desires  the  actual 
and  literal.  Leave  out  about  the  emerald  green,  and  say,  rolling  prairie  of  black  loam 
from  three  to  six  feet  deep,  resting  on  limestone.  So  rich,  in  fact,  that  plenty  of  men  have 
paid  for  their  land  by  their  first  wheat-crop." 

"  Isn't  it  just  like  Illinois  ?" 

"No;  Illinois  is  troubled  with  wet  bot 
tom  lands  in  its  southern  part,  and  the  cold 
winds  from  Lake  Michigan  in  the  northern 
counties  shorten  the  season  materially. 
The  valleys  through  which  the  A.  T.  &  S. 
F.  R.  R.  runs  are  singularly  free  from  great 
deposits  of  alluvium,  and  consequently  from 
miasm  and  fever  and  ague." 

June  folded  up  her  paper. 

"Wait;  I'll  get  it,"  she  said. 

"What?" 

"Information !" 

When  we  got  to  Topeka  she  insisted  on 
a  horse.  That  having  been  bought,  she 
resolved  to  live  in  the  saddle,  and  seriously 
proposed  to  the  Governor  to  make  the  rest 

WATER-TANK   ON   THE  A.    T. 

of  the  journey  on  horse-back.      Not  suc 
ceeding  in  this  scheme,  she  inveigled  Ben,  and  together  they  scoured  the  prairies  for  miles 
around,  coming  back  to  the  hotel  flushed  and  hungry,  and  bursting  with  oxygen  and  information. 

Topeka  is  a  model  prairie  city,  often  thousand  people,  watered  by  the  Arkansas,  that  brawls 
through  it,  and  fringed  with  orchards  and  farms,  just  at  this  time,  blossomy  and  bright.  It  is  pro 
vided  with  several  first-class  hotels,  is  lit  with  gas,  and  its  streets  are  laid  out  in  broad  level  avenues. 
Nothing  more  inviting  than  this  bright  garden  city,  with  its  residences  already  embowered  in 
fruit-trees  and  flowers,  can  be  found  in  the  State. 

It  is,  however,  but  the  first  of  a  series  of  sixty  towns  along  the  A.  T.  £  S.  F.  R.  R.,  all  of  which 
have  been  projected  with  the  same  liberality  and  taste,  and  all  of  which  are  progressing  toward 
metropolitan  significance  with  marvelous  rapidity. 

SOMETHING   LIKE   AN    ADVENTURE. 

The  improvement  in  the  Governor's  health  was  magical.  He  assumed  robust  airs,  and  began 
to  talk  like  a  pioneer.  He  proposed  to  me  to  ride  over  the  country  with  him  and  see  if  we  could 
discover  his  land.  Somehow  he  had  an  idea  that  for  a  New  York  man  to  see  his  Western  land, 
would  be  an  immense  practical  joke.  So  the  next  morning,  a  spanking  team  was  provided,  and 
we  set  out,  after  getting  our  bearings  at  the  land  office. 

It  was  a  fifteen  miles'  drive  across  an  undulating  country,  every  inch  of  which,  with  the  ex 
ception  of  the  roadways  and  water-courses,  was  alive  with  the  growing  wheat-crop,  now  eight 
and  ten  inches  high.  A  soft,  south  wind  swept  over  the  country.  It  was  vitalizing  and  balmy, 
and  filled  us  with  new  life. 


i6 

It  is  a  most  delicious  sensation  to  find  one's  own  Governor  a  companionable  fellow,  who  asks 
you  for  a  light,  who  cracks  a  joke,  and  hums  a  tune,  and  tells  a  story,  and  calls  you  "my  boy."' 

"This,  my  boy,"  he  said,  pointing  to  the  peach  orchards  and  luxuriant  hedges,  "is  the  grass 
hopper  country.  They  told  us  in  the  East  that  it  was  devastated,  cleaned  out,  eaten  up,  root  and 
branch !" 

We  stopped  a  moment  to  watch  a  man  turning  the  sod  in  a  new  quarter  section.  He  sat 
upon  his  comfortable  plough  driving  a  magnificent  team  of  horses,  and  the  black  earth  rolled 
over  beneath  him  in  a  long,  rich  wave.  He  wore  a  pair  of  butternut  trousers  and  a  hickory 
shirt.  Half  a  mile  farther  on  stood  the  farm-house,  a  simple  frame  cottage,  flanked  by  the  well 
and  stable.  In  the  garden-plot  laid  out  adjacent,  a  woman  was  hoeing.  She  wore  an  old-fash 
ioned  sun-bonnet  and  a  loose  calico  gown.  Her  round,  brown  arms  were  bare,  and  the  breeze 
wrapped  her  drapery  round  her  as  if  in  pure  admiration  of  her  lusty  outlines. 

After  riding  all  the  morning  through  a  delightful  pastoral  country,  the  Governor  arrived  at 
what  he  pleased  to  call  his  share  of  Eden.  It  is  true,  it  looked  very  much  like  all  the  rest  of 
Paradise  about  us,  except  that  Adam  had  not  yet  put  his  plough  into  it.  Wild  grass  waved  as 
far  as  the  eye  could  reach,  and  along  the  stream  that  ran  through  it,  there  was  a  fringe  of  cotton- 
wood,  burr  oak,  and  walnut  timber.  On  all  sides  it  was  bounded  by  cultivated  farms. 

Just  as  we  turned  our  horses'  heads  toward  a  farm-house  that  gleamed  through  the  distant 
trees,  there  appeared  upon  the  crest  of  the  rolling  land  about  half  a  mile  to  the  east  of  us,  two 
figures  on  horseback. 

"Indians,  as  I'm  a  sinner,"  said  the  Governor. 

He  was  right.  I  saw  at  a  glance  by  the  way  they  rode  their  ponies,  by  the  fluttering  feathers, 
and  above  all,  by  the  long  decorated  lances  that  they  held  in  their  hands,  that  they 
were  Cheyenne  or  Sioux  braves,  and  that  we  were  lost.  Without  further  parley,  we 


RAWHIDE-FRONTED  DUG-OUT — WESTERN   KANSAS. 

set  out  at  break-neck  speed  for  the  farm-house.  The  south  wind  rose  to  a  blast  as  we  breasted 
it  in  our  mad  flight.  The  astonished  prairie-chickens  and  plovers  rose  in  clouds  from  under  our 
horses'  feet.  As  I  was  driving,  I  could  only  wait  for  the  Governor  to  make  the  reconnoissance. 

"  They're  gaining  on  us,"  he  said.     "  Have  you  got  your  pistol  with  you  ?" 

"No,"  I  replied,  "I  left  it  on  my  table  for  a  paper-weight." 


We  could  hear  their  horses'  hoofs  now,  and  in  spite  of  the  wind,  their  blood-thirsty  yells 
reached  us  at  intervals. 

"By  jove,"  cried  the  Governor,  "one  of  'em's  a  squaw.  It's  no  use  killing  the  horses, 
we'll  have  to  defend  ourselves  as  best  we  can." 

Then  a  round,  English  voice  came  to  us. 

"  To,  ho  !  Ille  ho  !  We  don't  want  your  blood,  it's  in  our  veins  already!"  This,  with  a 
little  scream  of  feminine  laughter  at  the  end  of  it. 

We  pulled  up.     The  Governor  and  I  looked  each  other  in  the  eyes. 

"I  thought,"  said  he,  "  that  would  be  the  only  way  to  test  their  horsemanship." 

"  Yes,"  said  I,  "  I  understood  the  joke." 

"What  in  the  name  of  wonder  did  you  run  away  for  ?"  cried  June,  as  she  came  up,  waving 
an  eighteen  foot  corn  stalk,  upon  which  the  dried  leaves  fluttered  like  pennons. 

For  a  moment  there  was  no  answer;  we  stood  up  in  the  vehicle  and  looked  at  the  Amazon 
in  silent  amazement. 

Then  Ben  slid  off  his  horse,  tossed  the  bridle  to  June,  and  plunging  into  the  grass,  was  lost 
to  sight  for  three  minutes.  Nothing  but  his  legs  and  arms  being  momentarily  visible.  We 
could  hear  him,  however,  rolling  and  snorting  as  if  with  excess  of  prairie  oxygen.  Then  he 
came  out  feeling  better. 

At  last  the  Governor  managed  to  say : 

"  Running  away  !  nonsense  !     Did  you  think  we  were  running  away  from  you  ?" 

But  it  was  impossible  to  get  anything  out  of  the  madcaps  but  laughter,  until  we  all  turned 
back,  and  at  their  suggestion,  made  our  way  leisurely  to  what  June  was  pleased  to  call  the  ranche 
of  a  hardy  son  of  what  d'ye  call  it,  that  lay  on  the  north  of  our  estate. 

JUNE   MARSHALS    HER   FACTS. 

The  hardy  son  of  toil  proved  to  be  a  friend  of  Bellamy's  by  the  name  of  Markham,  and  they 
both  rode  out  to  meet  us.  In  Mr.  Markham's  little  house,  a  dinner  was  spread,  and  over  that 
hospitable  board,  a  fine  little  dispute  arose. 

The  Governor,  flushed  with  Kansas  air,  a  little  piqued  at  his  adventure,  and  probably  infected 
with  the  utilitarian  spirit  of  the  country,  precipitated  it. 

"I  came  out  here,"  said  he,  "  not  to  scurry  around  and  practice  the  war  whoop,  but  to  get 
facts." 

"  How  many  did  you  get  ?"  asked  June. 

"How  many!  why  the  air's  full  of  them.  A  man  breathes  information  here  if  he's  got 
sound  lungs." 

"  So  does  a  woman.  I  was  bound  that  it  should  not  be  said,  when  I  went  back,  that  I 
had  not  seen  the  land,"  exulted  June.  "  There  was  a  man  in  butternut  clothes  that  we  saw 
ploughing  in  a  field — about  six  miles  south — " 

"  Yes,"  said  the  Governor,  "we  stopped  and  studied  him." 

"And  we  interviewed  him,"  rejoined  June.     "  He  came  from  Southern  Illinois  broken  down 

with  low  fever,  and  his  wife  an  invalid  through  rheumatism.     He  paid  $7.75  an  acre  for  that 

land,  with  eleven  years   time  to  do  it.       He   got  in  fifty  acres  of  winter  wheat  the  first  year 

and  sold  it  at  $i.  15  a  bushel.     He  cut  one  thousand,  two  hundred  and  fifty  bushels,  and  pocketed 

2 


i8 

$500.00  clear  of  all  expenses.  The  next  year,  he  got  in  two  hundred  acres,  and  commenced  build 
ing  his  house.  The  third  year, he  paid  for  his  land,  and  lent  some  of  his  money  at  7  per  cent.  I' 
told  him  I  had  a  prospective  interest  in  these  two  sections,  and  he  offered  me  $10.00  an  acre  for 
them." 

We  all  looked  at  her.  She  never  was  half  so  handsome  as  now.  Her  eyes  sparkled,  her 
cheeks  glowed,  her  words  pulsed  with  a  new  enthusiasm. 

Mr.  Markham  stared  at  her  with  amazement.  The  Governor  was  astonished.  Bellamy 
smiled  to  himself. 

"  Facts  !"  she  continued.  "  Why,  this  State  of  Kansas  is  two  hundred  miles  wide,  and  four 
hundred  miles  long.  It  is  bigger  than  New  York  and  Indiana  put  together,  or  than  the  whole 
of  New  England.  There  are  over  fifty-two  million  acres  in  it,  and  only  a  little  over  four  millions 
have  been  improved ;  simply  because  the  facts  don't  circulate  East,  and  men  when  they  come 
here  never  go  back  to  report  them." 

"They  probably  freeze  to  death  in  the  winter,"  said  the  Governor. 

They'd  be  likely  to,  in  a  climate  where  the  cattle  are  left  out  all  winter,  and  where  5,000 
Mennonites  keep  themselves  warm  by  burning  hay,  where  the  weather  is  coldest. 

After  that,  the  Governor  gave  it  up,  and  the  girl  had  it  all  her  own  way. 

We  spent  three  days  in  Topeka,  and  just  before  setting  out,  June  told  me  that  she  and  Ben 
had  ridden  all  over  the  Governor's  property;  made,  in  fact,  a  thorough  survey  of  it,  and  a  map. 

Whereupon,  I  began  to  suspect  that  none  of  us  had  ever  quite  appreciated  June. 

The  fact  is,  we  never  appreciate  any  of  them  till  they  get  woke  up. 


ALONG    THE    ROAD. 

Give  me  a  field  where  the  unmowed  grass  grows ; 
Give  me  fresh  corn  and  wheat ;  give  me  serene 
moving  animals,  teaching  content: 
Give  me  nights  perfectly  calm  as  on  high 
Plateaus  west  of  the  Mississippi. 

— WALT.  WHITMAN. 

To  properly  understand  the  nature  of  the  ride  from  Topeka  to  Pueblo,  one  must  bear  in  mind 
that  the  country  between  the  Missouri  River  and  the  base  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  is  a  rolling 
champaign  six  hundred  miles  wide,  which  rises  from  an  elevation  of  560  feet  above  the  sea,  at  Kansas 
City,  to  five  thousand  three  hundred  feet,  at  the  Mountains.  The  A.  T.  &  S.  F.  Railroad  ascends 
this  magnificent  declivity  at  the  average  rate  of  twelve  feet  to  the  mile.  For  200  miles  the  track 
passes  through  what  is  unquestionably  the  richest,  as  well  as  the  most  beautiful  and  healthy 
bottom  and  meadow  land  in  the  world.  The  Cotton-wood  and  Arkansas  valleys  furnish  almost 
unbroken  groves  of  cotton-wood,  walnut,  oak,  pecan,  hackberry,  box  elder,  soft  maple,  mulberry, 
honey-locust,  wild  plum,  crab,  and  buck-eye  timber. 

The  twenty-two  miles  of  road-bed  in  Shawnee  County  intersect  as  fine  a  pastoral  picture  as 
the  oldest  agricultural  district  can  show.  The  road  itself  is  remarkably  well  built,  of  fifty-six 
pound  splice-jointed  iron,  oak  ties  (cut  in  the  State) ;  Howe  truss  bridges  (of  which  there  are 
sixty  between  Atchison  and  Granada),  stone  culverts,  and  rock  ballast,  with  continuous  side- 
ditching. 

Without  attempting  the  description  of  the  sixty  towns  that  have  sprung  up  along  the  route, 
and  which  show  the  school-house  and  the  church  long  before  the  smaller  buildings  are  visible,  let 
me  here  borrow  June's  description  of  the  ride  to  Pueblo.  • 

JUNE   AS   A   DESCRIPTIVE  WRITER. 

At  the  distance  of  two  hundred  or  two  hundred  and  fifty  miles  west  of  Kansas  City,  we 
approached  what  may  be  called  the  present  western  limit  of  arable  culture.  The  morning  of  the 
second  day's  travel  reveals  a  change.  The  buffalo  trails  stretch  out  across  the  limitless  levels  in 
crossing  and  converging  lines.  The  yellow,  air-cured  hay  of  the  gramma  grass  is  not  yet  alto 
gether  hidden  by  the  green  spears.  The  dry,  white  beds  of  the  water-courses,  strewn  with 
bowlders,  gleam  at  us  with  comfortless  and  voiceless  sterility.  The  buffalo  skeletons,  bleached 
and  dismembered,  multiply  close  to  the  track.  There  has  been  an  occasional  cry  of  "  antelope  " 
from  the  train-boy,  and  we  have  strained  our  eyes,  in  the  direction  of  pointing  fingers,  to  see  a 
shadowy  herd  moving  indistinctly  in  the  distance,  and  then  mysteriously  disappearing.  And  we 
have  dashed  through  the  prairie  dog  settlements  so  often  that  we  no  longer  smile  at  their  comi 
cal  antics,  or  endeavor  to  knock  them  off  their  mounds  with  our  pocket-pistols. 

Nor  is  this  second  day's  change  confined  to  appearances.  More  than  one  sense  perceives 
the  climatic  transition.  The  air  itself,  all  along  wonderfully  transparent,  is  now  curiously 
crystalline  and  dry.  Without  the  sting  of  humidity,  the  breezes  in  their  roughest  moods  leave  only 


20 

the  remembrance  of  a  caress  for  those  invalids  who  sit  upon  the  car  platforms.^  And  if  the  train 
stops,— as  it  will  at  every  one  of  those  water-tanks,  that  rise  like  so  many  miniature  forts,  and  ride 
at  us  with  increasing  size  over  the  horizon, — and  we  get  out  upon  the  hard,  dry  sod  to  stretch  our 
limbs,  the  awful,  measureless  stillness  of  desolation  settles  upon  us,— here  where  the  garish  hours 
hang  heavy  in  the  luxurious  monotony,  even  the  atmosphere  is  tuneless,  save  when  it  borrows 
a  wild  moan  or  two  from  the  telegraph  wires.  The  eye,  in  vain,  endeavors  to  measure  the  par 
allel  undulations  of  the  earth  as  they  fade  in  successive  tints  into  the  impalpable  blues  and  grays 


SHIP   OF  THE   PLAINS    AT   SEA. 

of  the  far  distance, — still  dotted — such  is  the  wonderful  achromatic  translucency  of  this  atmos 
phere — with  the  sage-bush. 

It  is,  at  least,  three  hundred  miles  across  this  silent  immovable  sea,  and  as  we  glide  over  its 
surface,  wearied  with  its  immensity,  and  yet  fascinated  with  its  green  waves  that  run  past  us, — 
past  us,  all  day,  and  seem  to  flow  together  far  behind,  and  swallow  up  the  faint,  vanishing  point 
of  the  shining  railroad  track, — we  think,  with  pity,  of  those  earlier  voyagers  toiling  across  this 
waterless  waste  in  what  has  been  aptly  called  the  Ship  of  the  Plains, — watching,  for  weary  days 
and  weeks,  for  a  glimpse  of  those  cool  peaks  which,  in  another  hour  or  two,  will  lift  their  spec 
tral  outlines,  for  us,  out  of  the  western  ether. 

That  once  familiar  object  on  the  plains,  the  canvas-covered  emigrant  wagon,  still  crawls 
occasionally  westward,  and  we  see  its  white  top,  now  and  then,  far  ahead  for  a  while,  and  presently 
far  behind,  diminishing  to  a  gleaming  speck,  and  finally  no  longer  distinguishable  from  the  little 
piles  of  bones  that  dot  the  distance. 

To  its  weary  occupants  nothing  can  be  more  welcome  than  the  moist  oases  of  the  railroad 
tanks,  or  that  other  sign,  looming  up  above  the  horizon  like  a  burnt  tree,  but  bearing  the  inscrip 
tion,  "  One  Mile  to  R.  R.  Station.  Food  and  Water." 

If  we  stop  at  a  little  station  called  La  Junta,  about  twenty-one  miles  west  of  the  old  cattle 
trading-place  of  Las  Animas,  we  shall  strike  what  is  left  of  the  old  Santa  Fe  trail  and  business, 
and  see  the  Ship  of  the  Plains  in  dock,  loading  for  a  southern  voyage.  Here  are  large  store 
houses  which  feed  these  unwieldy  transports  with  merchandise  for  New  Mexico  and  Arizona. 
When  loaded,  they  roll  leisurely  out  across  the  country,  drawn  invariably  by  oxen,  and  driven 
by  the  equally  bovine  greasers.  And  the  last  that  is  seen  of  them  are  the  canvas  sails  as  they 
disappear  slowly  over  the  undulating  country.  It  will  take  them  from  two  weeks  to  two  months 
to  make  the  voyage,  and  then  they  will  re-load  with  wool,  hides,  and  ore,  and  set  out  upon  their 
return  trip. 


21 

La  Junta  is  at  present  the  shipping-point  on  our  line  of  travel,  but  it  is  one  of  the  peculiar!, 
ties  of  a  new  country  that  these  rendezvous  move  on  with  the  railroad.  It  is  only  a  year  or  two 
ago  that  Las  Animas  was  the  center  for  the  herders,  cattle  shippers  and  "greasers."  But  what 
ever  the  point,  the  character  derived  from  this  class  remains  the  same.  Greasers  and  cow-boys 
are  as  unlike  as  it  is  possible  to  imagine  men,  in  all  but  their  love  of  gambling  and  whisky.  I  had 
an  opportunity  to  make  a  passing  sketch  of  the  former  at  La  Junta.  He  seemed  to  me  to  be  a 
creature  instinctively  aware  of  the  deterioration  of  his  stock,  and  who  had  long  since  made  up  his 
mind  to  dodge  as  many  of  the  hard  knocks  of  life  as  possible,  and  submit  servilely  to  those  that 
he  could  not  avoid.  His  face  is  invariably  of  one  type,  a  tawny,  lethargic  index  of  low  cunning, 
dull  sensuality  and  indolence.  He  preserves  the  long  straight  hair  and  high  cheek  bones  that 
his  mothers  borrowed  from  Indian  stock,  while  his  dress  and  his  gait  and  his  character  betray 
the  Mexican.  Under  great  stress  he  does  a  great  deal  of  simple  drudgery,  but  he  does  it  exactly 
as  do  the  mules  he  rides,  and  when  it  is  over  he  goes  with  his  fellows  and  sits  in  the  sun  to  stare 
vacantly  at  the  ground  or  into  the  air. 

As  for  the  land  which  the  Railroad  Company  offers  along  this  whole  distance,  the  settlements 
offer  the  most  conclusive  evidence  of  its  availability,  its  fertility  and  its  many  resources  for  all  the 
uses  of  man.  But  in  order  to  understand  the  marked  change  which  takes  place  after  passing  the 
present  arable  limit  and  reaching  what  is  at  present  part  of  the  great  plains,  and  to  do  away  with 
one  of  the  greatest  bugaboos  of  the  East,  it  must  be  understood  that  the  apparent  sterility  of 


SHIP  OF   THE  PLAINS  IN  DOCK. 


these  plains  is  not  a  thing  to  count  upon,  nor  are  the  isolated  patches  of  alkali  such  a  dreadful 
affair  as  they  are  represented,  and  as  they  doubtless  prove  to  be  west  of  the  main  range  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains  and  even  farther  north  in  the  State  of  Kansas. 


place,  the  aridity  of  the  dimate  west  of  Fort  Dodge,  as  has  been  proved  by  a. 
further  east,  win  be  modified,  if  *ot  altogether  prevented,  by  tflkge  and  tree- 


FLAECS  AT   ABCHOK. 

As  for  the  alkali,  it  only  needs  the  rain-fall  to  distribute  it,  and  as  it  contains  aU  the  salts  and 

phosphates  which  elsewhere  are  dumped  upon  the  land  at  heavy  expense,  its  presence  in  limited 

quantities  is  an  evidence  of  mineral  richness.  I  saw 
near  Fort  Dodge,  potatoes  and  corn  growing  luxuriantly 
out  of  what  had  been  an  alkali  patch,  but  which  a  de^ 
tennined  man  had  irrigated  by  means  of  a  wind-mill 
pump. 

In  a  word,  all  that  the  great  plains  need  to  redeem 
them — if  the  conversion  of  the  finest  grazing  lands  into 
farms  may  be  called  redemption — is  the  plough. 

At  Las  Animas,  we  visited  a  dug-out,  which. is  a 
rude  habitation  made  out  of  a  hole  in  the  ground,  and 
when  the  proprietor  is  luxurious,  is  fronted  with  hides 

o  three  nil  fifl  befcs.  By  reference  to  the  map,  the  reader  can  mark 
that  witt  pas*  through  Fort  Riley  aadthe  cky  ofTopeka,  sad 
•ty,  the  divisions  are  apparent.  Observations  continued  for  a 

otycarf  ifcqy  tfeattfcemcaa  t>yscaao»»  lor  tnc  whole  State  cump  ned  wl th  the  mean  of  each  belt,  give  a  rain- 
faBiBOMr  MiMeaad  western  befcs  OMXfcrd  less  than  the  eastern.  To  this  it  is  botpropcr  to  add  the  testimony  of 
J  fl  ft aili  ni^  r*mtlt  mt  vf  ihr  Tnfr  ftj,nr«hia  il  rnffrjpr  frf  FIBITIT  He  says :"  Those  regions,  which  less  than 

icsoftaent  ram  for  profitable  agricohnre,  are  exactly  the  ones  that  are 
llie  Great  American  Desert  theory  is  gettine  very  thin.    The  boonda- 
the  pioogh,  that  es^SdJy  with  the  absohtteJy  dry 
Mi  ;"•:,;  ad- 


deny  that  the  western  bek,  in 
ya»a«tt  faat  qaiirin  than  are  now  conceded. 


to  ts  supeor 

" 


and  decorated  with  horns.     The  owner  of  this  establishment,  a  lank,  tawny,  sinewy  fellow, 
proved  to  be  an  intelligent  book-keeper  from  Detroit,  who  had  suffered  with  pulmonic  disease, 


and  had  been  given  over  by  his  physician, 
was  die  or  rongh  it.  He  chose  to  rough 
it,  and  his  wife  abetted  him.  They  sold 
out,  came  here,  bought  a  ranche,  exca 
vated  a  house,  regained  health,  and  were 
happy.  This  man  owned  about  six  hun 
dred  cattle.  He  lived  in  the  saddle,  and 
when  we  asked  him  if  he  did  not  miss 
the  comforts  of  society,  he  said,  "Yes. 
especially  the  doctors'  bills."' 

Our  ride  through  Kansas  chanced  to 
be  at  the  time  the  farmers  along  the  line 
of  the  A.  T.  &  S.  F.  road  were  collecting 
specimens  for  the  Centennial  Exhibition, 
and  of  their  products  we  were  thus 


Fortunatelv,  he  was  a  fellow  of  some  wilL     It 


BESTING,   OK  THE   GREASEJCS* 


enabled  to  examine  the  wheat,  corn,  oats,  castor  bean,  and  countless  other  products  which  have 
since  amazed  the  visitors  to  the  Philadelphia  exposition. t 

t  Since  our  party  has  returned  and  most  of  these  sheets  have  gone  to  the  printer,  we  hare  visited  the  Kansas 
building  on  the  Fair  grounds,  and  fully  concur  in  this  statement  cot  from  die  TTmWli  Inhi  i  fww~4~-r~  of  the 
N.  Y.  World:  "  The  exhibit  made  in  this  building  of  die  products  of  Kansas  from  the  lands  of  d»e  A.  T.  &  S- 
F.  road  is  simply  amazing,  when  we  consider  how  recendy  that  Slate  was  a  howling  wilderness.  One  has  only  to 
pass  into  this  literal  bower  of  Ceres  to  understand  at  a  glance  how^ 


managed  in  the  interest  of  the  settler.     No  other  purely  ag 
Southern  KADSAS,  cither  in  loimtauit  growth,  or  tnc  variety 


variety  oc  products 


:    |    ^7    •** 


One  has  only  to 
power  of  a  railroad 
imes  wha  das  front 


P  U  EB  LO. 


Once  we  were  stepping  a  little  this  way  and  a  little  that  way:  now  we  are,  as  it  were,  in  a  balloon,  and  do  not 
think  so  much  of  the  point  we  have  left,  or  the  point  we  would  make,  as  of  the  liberty  and  glory  of  the  way. 

— EMERSON. 

FROM  Topeka  to  Pueblo  is  a  steady  climb  of  nearly  six  hundred  miles  to  the  upland  pla 
teau  of  North  America.  The  grade  is  of  the  average  ascent  of  ten  feet  to  the  mile.  When, 
therefore,  the  tourist  gets'  to  Pueblo,  the  present  terminus  of  the  Atchison,  Topeka  &  Santa 
Fe  road,  he  is  over  six  thousand  feet  above  the  sea-level.* 

But  he  has  not  arrived  at  this  altitude  without  undergoing  a  marked  change  of  spirits.  With 
the  increased  rarification  of  the  air  (due  to  the  elevation),  there  comes  an  exhilaration,  a  buoy 
ancy,  an  increase  of  animal  spirits,  that  indicate  how  effectually  the  burden  of  the  atmosphere  has 
been  lifted  from  weak  shoulders. 

There  were  two  or  three  coughing  invalids  in  the  train  when  we  started ;  they  were  going  to 
the  Colorado  Springs  by  the  advice  of  their  doctors.  The  change  in  the  symptoms,  and  in  the 


NEW  TIMES  ON   THE   BORDER — SOUTH   PUEBLO. 

conduct  of  these  sufferers,  as  we  advanced  westward,  must  have  been  noticed  by  all  the  pas 
sengers.  One  of  them,  a  young  girl  of  eighteen,  much  emaciated,  and  very  weak,  insisted  upon 
getting  out  at  one  of  the  water  stations,  and  she  roamed  about,  picking  up  specimens  of  wild 
sage  and  the  early  flowers,  and  we  could  see  her  from  the  car  windows,  inhaling  the  dry  air  with 
unmistakable  pleasure.  She  had  the  sympathy  of  everybody,  and  everybody,  I  am  sure,  noticed 
with  genuine  satisfaction  how  her  spirits  improved.  When  we  got  out  at  Pueblo,  she  bade  us 
good-bye  with  a  glad  face,  and  assured  us  that  she  was  going  to  get  well. 

*  Pueblo,  one  of  the  chief  towns,  and  the  natural  metropolis  of  Colorado,  had  increased  from  800  population,  in 
1870,  to  3,500  in  1873.  It  now  has  over  ten  thousand  inhabitants.  But  this  is  not  even  comparable  to  the  rate  of  in 
crease  along  the  Arkansas  valley  and  the  eastern  section  of  the  A.  T.  &  S.  F.  road,  where  they  point  you  out  towns 
of  five  and  six  thousand  people  as  "  two-year-olds,"  and  "four-year-olds;"  thus  preserving  the  nomenclature  of  the 
ranchmen  even  in  their  sociology. 


Pueblo  is  a  quaint  town,  with  the  New  England  village  grafted  upon  the  old  Spanish  settle 
ment.  Part  of  it  lies  in  the  valley,  and  part  (this  is  the  future  part)  upon  a  beautiful  plateau. 
You  miss  the  green  and  blossoming  freshness  of  the  Kansas  towns ;  its  white,  dusty  streets 
and  low  adobe  houses  do  not  compare  favorably  with  the  spic  span  cottages  of  the  Cotton-wood 
and  lower  Arkansas  Valleys. 

But  one  does  not  need  to  study  long,  to  know  that  it  will  sooner  or  later  be  the  metropolis 
of  Southern  Colorado — the  gate-way  through  which  all  the  enormous  travel  to  the  rich  mining 
regions  of  San  Juan  and  New  Mexico  must  flow  ;  the  objective  point  of  all  those  tourists  who 
visit  the  parks  and  canyons  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  the  stopping-place  of  the  thousands 
who  are  even  now  selecting  this  southern  route  to  California.  Pueblo,  in  ten  years,  will  be  a 
large  and  wealthy  city,  with  the  whole  of  Kansas  pouring  its  produce  through  its  streets  into 
the  South-west. 

The  Denver  and  Rio  Grande  (narrow  gauge)  Railway  runs  nearly  north  and  south  along  the 
eastern  slope  of  Colorado.  If  we  are  tourists  and  invalids,  we  go  north  to  the  Springs,  or  to 
Denver.  If  we  are  desirous  of  seeing  the  mines,  we  go  south,  taking  the  D.  &  R.  G.  R.  R., 
and  thence  by  coach  or  saddle-horse  to  San  Juan. 

I  am  sorry  to  say  that  we  narrowly  avoided  a  family  row  at  Pueblo.  Ben  insisted  that  we 
should  go  to  the  mines,  and  the  Governor  insisted,  with  equal  force,  that  we  should  go  north  to 


OLD    TIMES   ON    THE    BORDER — RICE'S   RANCH. 

Colorado  Springs.  A  high  debate  raged ;  June  listened  to  both  sides  impartially  ;  Bellamy  was 
on  the  fence ;  he  had  not  yet  made  up  his  mind  whom  it  was  safest  to  disagree  with. 

"  I've  heard  too  much  about  these  mines,"  said  Ben,  "  to  come  out  here  and  turn  away  from 
them  when  they're  right  under  my  nose. " 

"  But  I  didn't  come  out  here  to  see  mines,"  shouted  the  Governor.  "  I  couldn't  tell  one  if  I 
did  see  it.  What  I  want  are  canyons,  passes,  gulches,  gardens  of  the  gods,  peaks,  parks,  natural 
springs.  Hang  it,  I  came  out  for  a  sanitarium;  I  didn't  come  for  a  topographical  survey.  I  don't 
want  to  investigate  claims.  I  want  to  get  well." 

"All  of  which  you  can  do  by  going  south  as  well  as  north,"  rejoined  Ben.  "The  marvelous 
gold  fields  of  Southern  Colorado  are  just  now  the  most  interesting  subject  that  the  Western 
country  affords." 

"  Yes,  but  I  won't  travel  in  a  coach  and  sleep  in  a  tent,"  says  the  Governor. 

"No,"  adds  June,  "  that's  too  much  to  ask." 


26 


"Then,"  says  Ben,  "  I  suppose  I'll  have  to  go  it  alone." 

It  was  finally  arranged  that  he  should  go  down  into  the  mining  country,  while  we  went 
north,  and  that  we  should  afterward  meet  him  half  way,  at  Canyon  City. 

"You'll  be  sorry."  he  said,  to  June,  "that  you  didn't  take  my  advice." 

"No,  I  will  not,"  persisted  that  stubborn  girl. 

Ben  left  on  Thursday.  On  Friday  morning  we  were  just  leaving  the  hotel  in  Pueblo  for  the 
train,  when  the.  buss  drove  up  hurriedly,  two  trunks,  four  bandboxes,  a  valise,  several  shawls, 
finally  the  Dolliper  herself  got  out,  to  the  amazement  of  us  all. 

"I  was  afraid  I'd  be  too  late  to  catch  you,"  she  said,  puffing  and  blowing.  "How  do 

you  do,  my  dear  (kissing  June  on  both 
cheeks)?  How  you  have  improved.  And 
you  (meaning  the  Governor,  and  holding 
on  to  his  hand).  You!  Why  I  wouldn't 
have  believed  it.  You've  been  born 
again,  haven't  you?  It's  incredible.  Then 
you're  going  to  the  Springs — there's  no 
need  of  my  stopping  here  at  all.  Here,  you 
(to  driver),  put  these  things  back.  Good 
lands,  what  a  time  I  had  getting  word  to 
you !  But  there's  no  use  worrying  over  that 
now.  Our  party's  made  up.  Come  along 
Governor,  we'll  get  to  the  Springs  to  dinner, 
___  an<^  t^e7  have  dinners  up  there,  I  tell  you  /" 

PWith  this  she  took  the  Governor's  arm. 
^l|Bill|Mj^^H  At  least  June  says  she  took  it;  but  I  thought 

'  he  offered  her  his  arm.  He  pretended  to  be 
very  glad  to  see  her,  and  they  went  off  to 
gether.  June  and  I  following  after. 

"  Did  you  come  to  stay  long?" 

"Oh  dear,  yes,  as  long  as  you  do,"  says  the  Dolliper,  looking  round  kindly  upon  us. 
going  to  show  you  the  country.     Don't  mind  us  if  we  talk  business  occasionally." 
I  felt  June  tremble  with  indignation;  but  she  smiled  and  said  she  was  delighted. 
I  don't  believe  it.     There  wasn't  anybody  delighted  but  the  Governor. 


ADOBE   FIRE-PLACE. 


I'l 


UNDER    THE    WALLS. 


With  dreamful  eyes  my  spirit  lies 
Under  the  walls  of  Paradise. 


-READ. 


IF  the  reader  will  take  the  map  of  the  United  States  and  look  at  the  tinted  square  lying  directly 
west  of  the  State  of  Kansas  and  marked  Colorado,  he  will  see  the  Rocky  Mountain  range  divid 
ing  it  north  and  south  almost  in  the  middle.  The  Territory  is  thus  partitioned  into  three  do 
mains.  First,  the  eastern  upland  slope,  descending  toward  the  Mississippi,  and  drained  by  the 
Arkansas  River.  Second,  the  intermediate  mountainous  district,  and  third,  the  western  or  Pa 
cific  slope.  These  three  divisions  of  country  are  essentially  unlike  in  climate,  topography, 
scenery,  and  natural  resources.  The  eastern  slope  lies  forever  in  the  sun,  sheltered  from  the 
Pacific  Ocean  by  the  wall  of  porphyry  and  gneiss  that  rises  ten  thousand  feet  into  the  air,  and 
from  the  still  more  disagreeable  Atlantic  by  the  dry  plains  that  stretch  away  eastward  for  at  least 
two  hundred  miles. 

A  general  description  of  this  exceptional  tract  would  make  it  an  upland  plateau  watered  by 
streams  of  melting  snow,  and  beautifully  diversified  as  it  approaches  the  mountains  by  mesa  and 
valley,  through  which  the  cotton- wood 
and  the  lesser  flora  spring  in  abundance. 
It  is  the  land  of  sunshine,  of  a  perpet 
ually  dry  air,  and  the  one  spot  on  the 
continent  where  the  east  wind  does  not 
harass  the  invalid. 

Here,  under  the  walls  of  Paradise,  one 
is  perfectly  safe  from  either  ocean.  The 
asthmatic  feel  the  aerial  influence  at  once. 
The  debilitated  are  spurred  by  an  invis 
ible  hand.  There  is  no  dew  at  night. 
The  moon  looks  kindly  down  through  a 
crystalline  sky,  and  the  sun  shines  with  an 
Italian  effulgence.  From  Pueblo,  north,  ADOBE  OVEN. 

Colorado  Springs  is  only  forty-two  miles  off.  We  arrive  there  leisurely  in  three  hours  on  the 
Narrow  Gauge  Railway,  and  then  we  are  face  to  face  with  Pike's  Peak,  only  a  pleasant  walk  from 
the  Garden  of  the  Gods,  and  fairly  in  the  center  of  the  Sanitarium. 

Here  all  the  conditions  of  life  are  new  and  inspiriting.  The  town  itself  lies  under  the  mountains 
on  a  sunny  plain.  '  The  ice-cold  streams  from  the  snow-covered  peaks  bubble  through  its  streets, 
and  irrigate  the  fields.  Here  there  is  no  winter  as  the  dweller  on  the  Atlantic  coast  has  known 
it,  and  no  summer  as  he  has  learned  to  dread  it,  but  an  equable,  eternal  spring.  He  shall  fancy 


28 

himself  on  the  plains  of  Lombardy,  or  in  the  valley  of  the  Lauterbrunnen,  and  the  mornings  will 
not  chill  him,  nor  the  evenings  chase  him  with  unkindly  breath  within-doors.  All  the  airy  influ 
ences  of  Nature  are  beneficent  and  tender,  and  a  new  electrical  stimulus  spurs  him  into  activity. 

She  has  wrapped  her  grandeur  in  the  most  varied  beauty  of  color,  she  pours  her  medicine  at 
his  feet  from  every  valley,  and  drops  it  in  like  incense  from  every  zephyr.  Does  this  sound  rhap 
sodical  ?  Pray,  remember  that  I  have  written  it  where  one  cannot  breathe  without  taking  in 

ozone,  and  cannot  drink  without  imbibing  carbonic  acid  gas. 
Where  the  very  fish,  flesh  and  fowl  are  whipped  gamy  and 
fresh  from  the  mountain  trout-streams,  or  hunted  in  the  fast 
nesses. 

The  pressure  of  such  an  atmosphere  as  weighs  you  down 
is  gone  at  an  elevation  of  six  thousand  three  hundred  and 
seventy  feet.  Shall  not  the  emotions  come  to  the  surface  with 
the  blood  ? 

Here,  indeed,  one  can  watch  the  varying  moods  and  com 
plexions  of  the   mobile   mountain   and  never  grow  tired  of 
watching.     Changing  with  every  hour,  he  still  looks  calmly 
down  out  of  the  same  grandeur.     Morning  hangs  her  auroral 
THE  MOUNTAIN  BROOK.  softness  on  his  crags  ;  noonday  deepens  the  thousand  shad 

ows  of  his  furrowed  face,  and  sunset  flings  a  roseate  glory  over  his  snowy  crown,  but  nothing 
robs  him  of  the  awful  majesty  and  sovereignty  of  his  character. 

The  town  of  Colorado  Springs  lies  upon  a  naturallevel,  close  to  the  foot-hills  and  facing  the  range. 
Between  it  and  the  mountains  extends  the  table-land  called  the  Mesa,  which  is  at  once  a  meadow 
and  a  terrace,  sweeping  up  to  the  rocky  ascent  with  graceful  curves,  and  cut  here  and  there  with 
the  rivulets  that  brawl  down  from  the  heights.  Standing  upon  the  veranda  of  the  hotel  which 
faces  the  peaks,  one  cannot,  even  after  a  week's  familiarity  with  the  scene,  entirely  disabuse  him 
self  of  the  illusion,  that  the  picturesque  and  serrated  wall  lifting  itself  far  above  him,  is  more  than 
a  stone's  throw  away.  The  inevitable  and  irresistible  impulse  of  every  new-comer  is  to  walk 
over  to  the  mountains  before  breakfast.  The  invariable  result  is,  if  he  undertakes  it,  that  he  will 
not  be  back  to  dinner.  It  is  five  miles  to  the  foot-hills,  and  ten  at  least  to  Pike's  Peak  proper. 
But  with  one  leg  of  an  imaginary  pair  of  compasses  stuck  into  the  hotel,  you  may  with  the  other 
describe  a  ten-mile  circle,  such  as  we  sometimes  see  upon  city  maps,  which  will  inclose  most  of 
the  natural  wonders  of  this  range  that  have  been  celebrated  the  world  over. 

Pike's  Peak,  the  Ute  Pass,  the  Falls  of  the  Fountain,  the  Garden  of  the  Gods,  Glen  Eyrie, 
Monument  Park,  Cheyenne  Canyon,  Manitou  and  the  Mineral  Springs  are  all  easily  accessible, 
and  are  held  by  the  people  of  this  town  to  be  their  natural  perquisites. 

Manitou  Glen,  lying  in  the  mouth  of  the  Ute  Pass,  and  already  turned  into  a  fashionable 
watering-place,  is,  to  my  mind,  the  most  attractive,  if  not  the  most  stupendous,  of  these  resorts. 
Nothing  so  thoroughly  Swiss  in  its  wildness  and  rocky  beauty  have  I  anywhere  seen.  And  it  is, 
difficult,  as  you  enter  it,  to  avoid  listening  for  the  tinkle  of  the  Alpine  cattle-bell,  and  the  echo  of 
the  ranz  des  vaches.  But  its  pictorial  interest  is,  when  you  come  to  penetrate  it  far  enough 
broader,  deeper,  and  more  varied  than  anything  Switzerland  has  to  offer.  The  volcanic  agency 
has  massed  the  primitive  colors  of  the  earth  so  as  to  defy  description ;  the  red  sandstone,  the 


29 


porphyry,  the  gleaming  granite,  against  which  the  white  limestone  stands  out  in  curious  relief; 
the  moss-grown  bowlders,  the  splendid  seams  of  red  oxide  and  ochrous  earth, — make  an 
ensemble  of  pigments  that  is  wonderfully  fascinating.  All  these  hues  are  softened  and  comple 
mented  by  the  varying  tints  of  a  luxurious  vegetation.  The  Fountain  Creek  comes  tunefully 
down  the  pass,  through  chasms  and  over  precipices.  Pinyon,  pine,  cedar,  birch  and  hemlock 
shade  the  road  in  overhanging  groves,  and  mark  the  timber  lines  upon  the  heights  a  thousand 
feet  above  us  in  successive  belts  of  color.  The  wild  clematis  and  the  Virginia  creeper  festoon 
the  natural  arcades  with  their  tracery,  and  myriads  of  aromatic  shrubs  and  wild  flowers  make  the 
underbrush  and  the  sod  brilliant  with  their  dyes,  and  load  the  air  with  their  perfumes. 

The  moment  we  leave  the  mesa  and  enter  this  valley,  we  are  upon  enchanted  ground.  In 
one  instant  we  have  passed  from  the  shadowless  and  voiceless  void  to  the  sacred  penetralia, 
where  every  natural  agency  is  leagued  in  the  witchery  of  beauty.  South  of  us  rises,  eight  thousand 
feet  above,  the  snow-filled  ravines  and  glit 
tering  pinnacles  of  Pike's  Peak.  East  of 
us,  a  mere  glimpse  of  the  yellow  and  level 
meads  of  the  great  plain.  All  about  us, 
that  indescribable  charm  of  wildness  not 
yet  tamed  into  conventional  lines. 

It  is  here  that  we  meet  upon  the  rocky 
road-side,  just  as  we  have  experienced  the 
first  thrill  of  delight  common  to  all  men  in 
complete  isolation,  with  the  luxuriant  hotel 
and  Spring  House,  nestling  with  a  true 
watering-place  elegance  of  piazza  and 
drives,  right  in  the  lap  of  solitude. 

It  is  here,  too,  that  we  encounter  the 
mineral  springs.  They  are  six  in  number, 
and  vary  in  temperature  from  43°  to  56° 
F.,  and  are  strongly  charged  with  car 
bonic  acid.  They  are  respectively  called 
"The  Shoshone,"  "The  Navajoe,"  "The 
Manitou,"  "The  Ute  Soda,"  "The  Iron 
Ute,"  and  "The  Little  Chief."  The 
waters  have,  from  time  immemorial,  en 
joyed  a  curative  reputation  among  the 
Indians,  and  many  are  the  romantic  le 
gends  that  have  been  left  behind  as  to 
their  origin  and  purpose. 

Professor  Loew,  of  the  Wheeler  Expe 
dition,  has   published   an  analysis   which  SODA  SPRINGS  AND  CLIFF  HOUSE,  MANITOU. 
shows  that  they  resemble  the  springs  of  Ems,  and  excel  those  of  Spa.     I  cannot  help  thinking, 
in  spite  of  all  the  testimony,  that  the  great  medicinal  virtue  of  this  place  is  in  its  air.     A  balsamic 
breath  blows  forever  down  the  Pass  from  the  pines,  and  one  has  only  to  watch  the  invalids 


climbing  the  rocks,  driving  over  the  plains,  and  making  long  excursions  into  the  ever  new 
mysteries  of  the  range,  to  perceive  that  they  are  spurred  and  animated  by  vital  influences 
that  are  rare. 

A  pretty  wide  experience  of  watering-places  enables  me  to  speak  with  conviction,  when  I 
say  that  I  believe  this  spot  will,  in  time,  become  a  national  resort.  It  can  be  reached  now 
in  four  days  from  New-York,  by  the  Atchison,  Topeka  &  Santa  Fe  Road.  Its  position,  its 
surroundings  and  its  climatic  conditions  surpass  those  of  any  place  in  this  country.  Within  half 
an  hour's  walk  is  "The  Garden  of  the  Gods."  Lying  behind  it  is  the  main  range  of 
the  Rocky  Mountains,  which  furnishes  ever  new  surprises  t,o  the  adventurous  explorer, 
and  offers  all  kinds  of  game  to  the  sportsman.  Excellent  brook-trout,  ptarmigan,  or  Rocky 
Mountain  quail,  red- tail  deer,  and  duck,  snipe  and  grouse,  to  say  nothing  of  antelope  and 
an  occasional  cinnamon  bear,  are  the  standard  temptations.  I  ought  to  say  here  that, 

unlike  Switzerland,  the  mountains  are  in 
this  vicinity  entirely  accessible.  Our 
party,  in  which  there  were  four  ladies, 
penetrated  the  Ute  Pass  a  distance  of 
over  two  miles,  and  ascended  to  an  ele 
vation  of  nine  thousand  feet  without  any 
difficulty.  We  afterward  found  an  easy 
path  up  the  Cheyenne  Canyon,  and  an 
excellent  carriage-road  to  the  top  of  the 
Grand  Canyon.  The  forests  of  pine  tim 
ber  do  not  cease  until  an  elevation  of 
eleven  thousand  five  hundred  feet  is 
reached;  whereas,  in  Switzerland,  they 
disappear  at  six  thousand  feet.  I  am  told 
that  at  Mount  Lincoln  mining  is  carried 
on  all  winter  at  an  altitude  of  over  four 
teen  thousand  feet,  which  is  as  high  as 
the  "Jungfrau." 

To  the  tourist  "  The  Garden  of  the 
Gods "  will  probably  ever  remain  the 
most  prominent  attraction  of  this  place. 
Before  I  set  out  for  that  celebrated  natu 
ral  museum,  I  rapped  at  the  door  of  a 
quaint  little  cottage,  perched  up  like  a 
wren's  nest,  over  the  brook  in  the  pass.  One  cannot  look  at  its  exterior  and  resist  the  tempta 
tion  to  make  a  call.  Unfortunately  for  me,  Grace  Greenwood  was  not  at  home.  However,  after 
inspecting  as  much  of  the  nest  as  was  accessible,  I  felt  my  respect  for  the  lady's  independence 
materially  heightened.  If  she  had  possessed  less  she  would  have  built  an  ornamental  chateau 
at  Long  Branch,  and  then  lived  in  New-York  to  escape  from  it.  She  was  probably,  at  the  time 
I  called,  making  a  visit  to  the  United  States  Signal  Station  in  the  clouds  near  by,  or  had  gone  to 
Denver  on  her  mule  to  do  her  shopping. 


GRACE  GREENWOOD'S  COTTAGE,  MANITOU. 


GOD'S    GARDEN. 


Bottomless  vales  and  boundless  floods, 

And  chasms  and  caves  and  Titan  woods 
With  forms  that  no  man  can  discover. 

-POK. 

IT  was  not  enough  that  we  should  visit  the  Garden  of  the  Gods  by  daylight ;  June  insisted 
that  it  should  be  done  by  moonlight. 

It  is  one  of  those  natural  parks  where  Thor  and  Boreas  seem  to  have  done  all  the  hammer 
ing  and  chiseling,  after  a  greater  than  either  had  shut  the  domain  in  with  an  upturned  stratum. 
The  gate,  as  you  approach  the  entrance,  is  by  far  the  finest  part  of  the  exhibition. 

If  you  will  imagine  a  bed  of  red  and  gray  sandstone,  gypsum  and  limestone,  from  twenty  to 
fifty  feet  thick,  five  hundred  feet  broad  and  half  a  mile  long,  turned  on  edge  and  broken  in  the 
middle  so  as  to  leave  a  gap  of  a  hundred  feet  wide,  you  will  get  a  general  idea  of  the  ridge  which 
forms  this  wall  and  gate- way.  But  you  cannot  possibly  have  any  conception  of  the  intricate 
modeling,  the  grotesque  forms  into  which  the  elements  have  worn  the  surface,  nor  of  the  splendid 
hues,  partly  integral  and  partly  laid  on  by  the  artist  hand  of  time.  To  the  cultivated  eye,  the 
form  is  lost  in  the  blaze  of  pigments.  When  the  painter  first  sees  it  he  pauses  in  astonishment 
at  what  appears  to  be  a  stupendous  and  idealess  poem  of  color.  From  a  little  distance  the 
fa9ade,  where  it  does  not  rise  scarlet  and  maroon  against  the  greens  of  the  hills  behind,  runs  into 
a  veined  and  patched  mosaic  of  chalcedony  and  onyx. 

As  the  beholder  draws  closer  he  sees  that  it  is  the  graining  and  enameling  of  the  elements 
on  a  superb  ground,  and  then  he  perceives  also,  that  a  thousand  demons  with  preternatural  chisels 
were  probably  doomed  to  work  at  these  fantastic  pinnacles  and  niches  and  pedestals  for  ages — 
left,  indeed,  to  their  own  grotesque  fancies  to  shape  and  scoop  and  polish  the  eternal  bastions  into 
the  strangest  devices — only  they  could  not  cease  from  their  work.  Nothing  short  of  the  fancy 
of  a  Coleridge  can  write  the  demoniac  history  of  the  gates.  But  I  can  readily  see  that  any  man, 
even  without  aboriginal  blood  in  him,  would  drop  into  a  poetical  fetishism  if  he  lived  here  long 
and  had  few  companions,  other  than  the  whirling  eagles  which  build  their  nests  along  the  para 
pet,  and  rear  the  young  symbols  of  the  Republic  in  the  upper  frieze. 

But  to  see  it  at  night  is  another  thing.  Then  if  the  moon  be  full,  the  demon  of  the  mountain 
writhes  in  the  mysterious  light,  the  phantom  moves  on  his  pedestal  and  shakes  his  shroud  at  you. 
Your  horses  grow  restive,  and  all  those  strange  monuments  seem,  indeed,  to  be  imprisoned 
ghosts. 

June  well  said  that  Poe  must  have  visited  this  place  in  one  of  his  disembodied  moments.  And 
then,  to  heighten  the  effect,  she  declaimed  one  of  his  cheerful  verses : 

\ 


"  By  a  route  obscure  and  lonely 
Haunted  by  ill  angels  only, 

Where  an  Eidolon  named  Night 

On  a  black  throne  reigns  upright, 
I  have  reached  these  lands  but  newly 
From  an  ultimate  dim  Thule — 

From  a  wild,  weird  clime — 

Out  of  Space,  out  of  Time." 

"Don't  you  remember,"  she  said,  in  a  whisper,  "that  he  acknowledges  in  '  Ulalume,' 

"  '  Here,  once  through  an  alley  Titanic 
Of  cypress,  I  roamed  with  my  soul 
Of  cypress,  with  Psyche  my  soul, 
Those  were  days  when  my  heart  was 

volcanic 
As  the  scoriae  rivers  that  roll? '  " 

The  fact  is,  Colorado  is  a  land  of  wonders.     A  week  at  the  springs  hardly  suffices  to  see 
them  all. 

June's   note-book  contains,  along  with  a  number  of  excellent  pencil-sketches,  the  follow 
ing  memoranda,  which  are  better  summaries  than  I  can  make : 

"Visitors  must  not  fail  to  visit  Monu 
ment  Park.  It  is  only  ten  miles  north  of 
the  springs,  an.d  contains  some  wonder 
ful  monoliths  that  are  curiously  cut  by  the 
wind. 

"  The  Petrified  Forest  is  too  far  away 
for  a  hurried  visit,  and  one  has  to  cross 
the  foot-hills  to  get  at  it.  However,  they 
get  fine  moss-agates  who  go  there. 

"  Glen  Eyrie,  the  residence  of  Gen 
eral  Palmer,  is  at  the  mouth  of  Queens 
Canyon.  The  Canyon  is  worth  a  visit. 

"There  is  a  good  bridle-path  part  of 
the  way  up  Pike's  Peak.  Regular  ascents 
are  made  by  parties  from  the  Manitou 
House.  The  U.  S.  Signal  Station  is  at  the 
summit,  and  the  view,  when  the  clouds  do 
not  interfere,  is  sublime. 

"There   is   a   half-way  house  on  the 
ascent,  where  the  tourist   gets  excellent 
refreshment,  and  can  rest.      Those  who 
have  climbed   Mont   Blanc  will  find  the 
journey    up    Pike's    Peak    mere    child's 
play,  though  it  is  14,000  feet  high. 
"The  roads  in  Colorado  are  natural  boulevards,  and  the  finest  horses  in   the  world  can  be 
obtained  at  moderate  prices.     I  attribute  the  health  of  the  visitors  at  the  springs,  in  great 
measure,  to  this  fact :    They  ride  and  walk  incessantly — thus  living  in  the  open  air. 

"I  wish  I  had  Poe's  talent  for  half  an  hour.     I'd  write  a  description  of  a  star-lit  night  here. 
I  shall  remember  its  '  crystalline  delight '  as  long  as  I  live.     The  only  disagreeable  feature  is 


S.    SIGNAL  STATION,   SUMMIT  OF  PIKE  S  PEAK. 


33 


the  leaving  it  and  going  indoors  to  bed.      The  society  at  the  springs  is  excellent,  cultivated 

people  from  all  parts  of  the  world  make  up  the  visitors,  and  they  so  far  adapt  themselves  to 

the  Western    customs  as  to  leave  many 

of  their  conventional  notions,  and   their 

exclusiveness,   at   home.      The   air,   the 

freedom  and  the   sight-seeing  make  it  a 

continual  holiday. 

"  Don't  fail  to  take  a  run  up  to  Denver 
City  by  the  Denver  and  Rio  Grande 
Narrow  Gauge  Railroad,  which  skirts  the 
base  of  the  mountains,  runs  through 
chasms  and  gulches,  and  along  ledges, 
every  one  of  which  furnishes  a  new  sen 
sation. 

"Denver  is  the  smartest  city  west  of 
the  Mississippi,  and  once  there,  the  tourist 
who  has  come  through  the  garden  of 
Kansas  can  go  on  to  California,  if  he 
chooses,  by  the  Union  Pacific.  In  fact, 
I  believe,  very  many  California  passen 
gers,  in  order  to  avoid  the  long  and  dreary 
ride  from  Omaha  to  Cheyenne,  now  come 
by  the  way  of  Pueblo.* 

"Tourists  with  a  geologic  taste  will 
find  Colorado  Springs  rich  in  specimens. 
Agate,  chalcedony,  onyx,  topaz,  rock  crys 
tal,  jasper,  fossils,  spar,  gold,  silver, 
galena,  malachite  and  carnelian  can  be 
picked  up,  or  bought  at  the  museums  for 
a  trifle.  I  saw  an  agate  at  the  office  of  Col. 
McAllister,  that  weighed  five  hundred 
pounds.  It  was,  I  believe,  to  be  cut  and 

sent  to  the  Centennial.   Up  in  the  gulches  ROCKS  IN  MONUMENT  PARK. 

near  Denver,  they  occasionally  find  rubies  and  garnets,  but  they  are  rare. 

"  I  lay  last  night,  for  an  hour,  listening  to  the  bubbling  of  the  ice-water  under  my  window.  It 
was  the  stream  from  the  melted  snows  on  the  mountains.  These  cold  rivulets  are  led  through 
all  the  streets.  It  reminded  me  of  Morris's  verse : 

"  '  Water  shouts  a  glad  hosanna. 
Bubbles  up  the  Earth  to  bless ! 

Cheers  us  like  a  precious  manna, 
In  the  Western  wilderness,'  " 

*  Parties  going  to  California  can  visit  all  the  famous  resorts  of  Colorado,  en  route,  by  asking  for  tickets  from  New- 
York  to  San  Francisco  via  the  Atchison,  Topeka  &  Santa  Fe  Railroad,  passing  through  the  Kansas  Valley,  touching 
Pueblo,  Colorado  Springs,  Denver  and  Cheyenne,  and  thence  via  the  Union  Pacific  Railroad.  Through  tickets  to  the 
Pacific  Coast  by  this  route  can  only  be  obtained  of  Cook,  Son  &  Jenkins,  261  Broadway,  or  at  any  of  their  offices  in 
Europe  or  America. 


34 


THE    GRAND    CANYON. 

We,  too,  have  tracked  by  star-proof  trees, 

The  tempest  of  the  Thyiades, 
Scare  the  loud  night  on  hills  that  hid, 

Outchide  the  north  wind  if  it  chid, 
And  hush  the  torrent-tongued  ravines 

With  thunders  of  their  tambourines. 

— SWINBURNE. 

"  EVERY  THING  lias  been  conquered  but  the  Grand  Canyon,"  I  said. 

June  was  thoughtful.     "  How  high  do  you  say  Pike's  Peak  is  ?  "  she  asked. 

"  14,336  feet,"  I  answered. 

"  And  people  sometimes  risk  their  lives  in  going  up  ?  " 

"Yes,  I  suppose  so;  people  who  have  heart-troubles  risk  a  great  deal  in  the  rarified  atmos 
phere." 

"Well,"  said  June,  "we  must  get  the  Dolliper  up  there.     Do  you  think  her  heart's  affected?  " 

I  looked  at  her  with  amazement ;  she  kept  on,  thoughtfully : 

"  Fourteen  thousand  feet  above  the  level  of  the  sea.  I  wish  it  was  fourteen  thousand  feet 
beneath!" 

"  My  dear  girl ! "   I  exclaimed,  "  why  this  unusual  fiendishness  ?" 

"  Listen  a  moment,"  said  the  dear  girl,  sitting  down  by  the  side  of  a  soda  spring  in  the  glen 
where  we  had  wandered.  "  That  woman  has  been  talking  to  the  Governor  about  his  Kansas 
land;  she  has  coaxed  him  into  the  belief  that  they  can  together  make  some  kind  of  a  magnificent 
enterprise  by  a  partnership  in  hemp.  He  rather  likes  the  idea,  and  as  the  Dolliper  natters  him, 
he  lets  her  have  her  own  way.  Don't  you  see  that  we  must  push  that  woman  down  a  canyon,  or 
else " 

"Well,"  I  cried,  "else?"'— 

"Or  else  you  must  help  me  to  outwit  her." 

"  How  ?  " 

"  By  insisting  that  the  land  belongs  to  me.  I've  won  it.  If  you  and  Bellamy  stand  by  me, 
we  can  beat  her." 

"What  will  you  do  with  the  land  ?  "  I  asked;   "  sell  it?  " 

"No;   cultivate  it." 

"Then  I'm  yours.      There  comes  the  Dolliper  now." 

"  She's  looking  for  a  fresh  mineral  spring,"  said  June.  "  It's  her  weakness;  she  smells  of 
every  puddle,  to  see  if  it's  not  soda  water,  and  I've  been  trying  to  persuade  her  that  there 
is  a  perennial  spring  of  ginger  beer  on  the  top  of  Pike's  Peak.  But  if  you  stand  by  me,  she 
shall  live,  for  she  shall  be  made  miserable." 


35 


That  very  day  we  left  the  Springs  to  pay  a  visit  to  the*  Grand  Canyon  of  the  Arkansas. 
Every  one  of  the  party  regretted  leaving  the  delightful  vicinity  of  Manitou.  But  the  tourist's 
fate  hurried  us  on. 

We  proceeded  to  Canyon  City  (which  is  a  little  town  eighty  miles  south  of  the  Springs)  by  the 
Denver  and  Rio  Grande  road,  and  there  we  took  a  conveyance  to  the  top  of  the  canyon,  twelve 
miles  west  of  the  town,  and 
there  Ben  joined  us  again.  After 
a  toilsome  drive  in  the  mount 
ains  of  three  hours,  we  turned 
into  a  grove  of  pine  and  pinyon, 
a  gnarled,  knobby  Arcadia. 
"  Hold  on !"  shouted  the  driver, 
as  some  of  the  party,  with  the 
usual  alertness  of  excursionists, 
sprang  out  of  the  vehicle  and 
began  roaming  about.  "  Wait, 
danger!"  He  tied  his  horses 
carefully,  and  took  his  crowbar 
out  of  the  carriage.  "This  'ere's 
the  canyon,"  said  he.  "Mind 
your  eye!"  We  could  see 
through  the  trees  a  number  of 
rocks  lying  as  if  in  a  field. 
Guided  by  the  driver,  we  ap 
proached  them.  And  then  it 
became  suddenly  apparent  to  all 
of  us  that  these  rocks  were  the 
brim  of  a  chasm  two  thousand 
feet  deep,  and  nearly  a  mile  wid  e. 
Those  of  us  who  approached  the 
edge  and  looked  down,  drew 
back  with  bated  breath.  Two 
thousand  feet  straight  down  is  a 
view  not  often  accorded  to  man, 
and  it  takes  some  time  to  adjust 
the  strongest  nerves  to  the  con-  GARDEN  OF  THE  GODS. 

ditions.  The  brink  of  this  awful  gulf  is  ragged  and  broken.  Great  crumbling  projections  of 
rock  offer  precarious  points  of  sight,  and  little  ledges  that  look  as  solid  as  the  earth  behind  you, 
disclose  to  your  eye  when  you  crawl  to  the  edge,  the  thrilling  fact  that  you  are  out  upon  what 
appears  to  be  the  rotten  half  of  a  broken  arch.  One  seemingly  secure  promontory  ended  in  a  level 
platform  of  granite,  far  out  beyond  the  jagged  line,  and  upon  this  rim  one  of  the  ladies  was  dis 
covered  standing  with  her  toes  over  the  edge,  and  her  dress  fluttering  in  the  mountain  breeze. 
Just  as  the  party  called  to  her  to  come  down,  the  driver  caught  her  suddenly  by  the  arm  and 


36 

pulled  her  back.  Scarcely  had  she  stepped  from  the  granite  out-look,  when  the  man  put  the  point 
of  his  crowbar  into  a  crack  of  the  huge  stone  and  dislodged  the  whole  mass  with  comparatively 
little  effort,  sending  it  down  the  abyss  with  the  roar  and  smoke  of  an  exploded  cannon.  Lying 
upon  our  stomachs,  the  whole  party,  with  our  chins  projecting  over  the  brink,  looked  far  down 
into  the  curiously  vertical  perspective,  and  trembled.  There  at  the  bottom  roared  and  foamed 
the  Arkansas  River,  dwindled  now  to  a  thread  of  wrinkled  silver,  the  trees  upon  its  shores 
looking  like  weeds.  While  in  this  position  our  guide  busied  himself  with  his  lever.  With 
prodigious  labor,  he  worked  the  enormous  bowlders  loose,  and  we  saw  them  hurled  downward, 
now  exploding  into  fire  and  dust  as  they  struck  some  projecting  ledge,  now  roaring  and  hurtling 
with  incalculable  momentum  through  the  timber,  opening  a  swathe  in  the  trees,  filling  the  gorge 
with  sharp  echoes,  and  disappearing  in  the  deep  distance  in  clouds  of  atoms. 

Strange  sport  this,  but  there  is  an  undeniable  fascination  about  it.  This  driver  and  guide  is 
proof  enough  that  the  parties  coming  here  expect  this  part  of-  the  entertainment,  and  I  am  told 
that  they  make  up  picnics  in  Canyon  City  and  visit  this  spot  with  little  other  purpose  than  to 
dislodge  the  rocks.  Delicate  women,  robust  men  and  timid  children  will  then  stand  in  a  group 
and  listen  with  intense  satisfaction  and  considerable  awe  at  the  devastation  they  make.  I 
confess  that  the  sport,  aside  from  the  pure  exhibition  of  natural  dynamics,  seemed  to  me  some 
what  profane. 

Some  months  ago  the  Atchison,  Topeka  &  Santa  Fe  Railroad  had  one  hundred  men  em 
ployed  in  the  valley  below  cutting  railroad  ties  and  floating  them  down  the  Arkansas,  and 
it  was  found  necessary  to  post  a  polite  notice  among  these  trees,  requesting  tourists  not  to 
throw  stones  or  play  with  avalanches.  I  asked  the  guide  whether  the  visitors  generally  insisted 
on  this  Cyclopean  sport,  and  he  said  the  women  almost  always  got  it  up  and  then  made  the  most 
fuss  about  it.  I  wonder  if  the  wanton  exhibition  of  power  is  not  characteristic  of  the  sex. 
So  far,  no  accidents  that  I  could  hear  of  have  happened  here. 

Afterward,  when  seated  under  the  trees  enjoying  our  lunch,  the  roar  of  the  wind  through 
the  canyon  amazed  us.  Such  unearthly  diapason  was  surely  never  heard  anywhere  else.  It  was 
indeed  the  voice  of  the  Almighty,  and  I  feel  how  puny  must  be  any  human  attempt  to  characterize 
those  tones  with  mere  words.  WTe  exhaust  our  dynamic  terms  when  we  make  reference  to 
thunder,  but  here  was  an  awful  melody  emitted  from  the  larynx  of  mother  earth — a  stupendous 
monochord  made  by  vibrating  mountains.  If  ever  you  desire  to  hear  an  ^Eolian  lute  which 
breathes  the  solemn  oratorio  of  creation  in  such  tremulous  passion-tones  as  make  the  soul  shudder, 
or  mount  to  a  Te  Deum  on  the  airy  gamut  of  atmospheres,  come  and  sit  passive  a  few  moments 
by  the  side  of  this  organ,  which  makes  a  cathedral  of  immensity. 

"Tell  us,  somebody,"  cried  June,  brushing  a  Rocky  Mountain  grasshopper  from  her  sand 
wich,  "how  this  chasm  was  made." 

"Ah,"  says  Bellamy,  with  mug  in  one  hand  and  a  slice  of  ham  in  the  other,  "you'll  have 
to  apostrophize  the  elements." 

"  No  forest  fell, 

When  thou  didst  build,  no  quarry  sent  its  stones 
To  enrich  thy  walls,  but  thou  didst  hew  the  floods, 
And  make  thy  marble  of  the  glassy  wave. " 

"  Good  poetry,  but  bad  geology,"  says  Ben.  "  Water  had  very  little  to  do  with  it.  Agassiz 
says  it  was  rent  at  one  upheaval,  and  buried  afterward  in  six  thousand  feet  of  ice  for  a  million  years. " 


37 


"  Then,"  says  June,  with  a  woman's  charming  impatience,  "don't  let  us  go  into  its  history." 

The  Governor  (with  a  sardine  by  the  tail).  No,  we  have  other  business  of  more  importance. 
We've  reached  the  end  of  our  tether,  and  now  you  young  folks  ought  to  be  thinking  of  going 
home. 

Ben.  Young  folks  !    We  scorn  the  idea  of  going  home  without  you. 

Mrs.  Dolliper  (pallidly  munching  a  Canyon  City  biscuit).  I  have  induced  him  to  stay  in 
Kansas  and  go  into  business  again. 

The  Governor  (using  the  supplement  of  a  New- York  Herald  for  a  napkin).  Yes,  I  think  some 
of  trying  to  utilize  that  Kansas  land.  The  climate  has  not  only  restored  my  health,  but  my 
sense  of  duty  and  my  ambition. 

June.  You  never  lost  your  sense  of  duty.  You  gave  the  land  away  by  promise,  and  I  claim 
it  now.  It  will  take  something  more  than  Kansas  influence,  or  St.  Louis  influence  either,  to  make 
you  break  your  word  ! 

[Tumultuous  applause  from  Ben,  Bellamy  and  me,  which  volleyed  through  the  canyon  and 
startled  the  Governor  with  the  idea  that  nature  sympathized  with  us.  ] 

The  Dolliper  saw  the  peril,  and  tried 
to  get  an  adjournment.  But  majorities 
have  no  more  hearts  than  corporations. 

"Bless  my  soul!"  said  the  Governor, 
reprovingly.  "  I  said  the  one  who  got  the 
most  information.  That's  a  point  that  it 
will  take  several  years  to  decide." 

"  Can  be  done  in  two  minutes,"  re 
sponded  June.  "  I've  got  my  vouchers 
in  my  book  here.  Take  a  vote." 


"  Aye,  aye,"    shouted  all   her  confed. 
crates,  "  a  vote,  a  vote  !" 

Ben  then  made  a  little  speech.  He 
said :  "  May  it  please  your  Excellency,  the 
only  contingency  that  could  in  any  case 
destroy  June's  claim  to  this  estate  grew 
out  of  the  rivalry  of  other  competitors. 
I  have  the  honor  to  inform  you,  that,  fully 
satisfied  of  the. futility  of  further  compe 
tition,  we  have  all  withdrawn  in  her  favor, 
and  trust  that  you  will  soon  be  convinced,  as  we  are 
believe  she  can  justify  her  claim  at  this  moment." 

"  Try  me,"  cried  June ;   "  I've  got  two  hundred  pages  of  information  in  my  book, 
it  in  less  than  three  hours  and  a  half." 

"  My  dear,"  said  the  Dolliper,  "you'll  exhaust  yourself.     Don't." 

"Read,  read!"  cried  Ben  and  all  the  rest  of  us. 

"No,  no  !"  broke  in  the  Governor.     "  Print  it,  print  it.     We'll  read  it  in  a  book.' 

"  But  how  am  I  to  prove  my  claim  ?"  asked  the  intrepid  girl. 


OLD   FOGY   STAGE-DRIVER. 

that   she  is  entitled  to  the  property.      I 
I  can  read 


38 

"  Here,  we'll  have  a  competitive  examination,"  replied  the  Governor.  "  Mr.  Bellamy  and 
Mrs.  Dolliper  shall  be  umpires.  What  are  the  chief  products  of  Kansas?" 

"  Corn,  cattle,  cow-boys,  and  contentment,"  said  Ben. 

"  Railroads,"  said  Bellamy,  looking  as  ignorant  as  possible. 

"School-houses,"  said  I. 

"Kansas,"  said  June,  pluming  herself,  "produces  astonishment.  She  does  it  by  means  of 
her  winter  wheat,  of  which  she  grew  in  1875,  10,046,116  bushels,  that  brought  at  the  depot, 
$9,457,559.17.  She  has  altogether,  4,749,900.89  acres  under  cultivation  and  pasture,  which  in 
that  year  produced  products  to  the  value  of  $43,970,494.28,  exclusive  of  live  stock.  'If  you  like 
that  sort  of  thing,  I  can  give  you  plenty  of  it." 


BALANCE-ROCK. 

"  I  confess  it's  rather  tedious  to  me,"  said  the  Dolliper. 

"  Oh,  we  just  revel  in  it,"  added  Ben  and  the  other  conspirators. 

"  Proceed,"  said  June,  calmly.  "  Try  me  on  the  meteorology,  ornithology,  geognosy,  oryktog- 
nosy.  I  am  a  fountain  of  information :  tap  me  with  a  question,  and  I'll  spout  statistics  by  the 
hour." 


39 

I  think  the  Governor  saw  by  this  time  that  he  was  out-maneuvered.  He  made  one  or  two 
feeble  attempts  to  ask  questions,  but  they  were  met  promptly  with  such  a  volume  of  facts,  that  he 
was  not  rash  enough  to  go  on.  It  was  more  convenient  to  acknowledge  that  June  had  won,  than 
to  let  her  prove  it.  Still  he  could  not  resist  the  temptation  to  try  her  with  one  or  two  other 
conundrums. 


CATTLE-DROVE  IN   THE   MOUNTAINS. 


GOLD. 

" '  Over  the  mountains 

Of  the  moon, 

Down  the  valley  of  the  shadow 
Ride,  boldly  ride,' 
The  shade  replied, 
If  you  seek  for  Eldorado.'  " 

A  SHREWD  twinkle  came  into  the  Governor's  eye,  as  he  asked  :  "  How  about  the  gold  fields 
south  of  us  ?  Come,  that's  what  I  want  to  know  about." 

"  It  was  the  gold  fields  of  Southern  Colorado,  and  the  immense  territory  of  Mexico,  holding 
the  oldest  civilization  on  our  continent,  that  shaped  the  A.  T.  &  S.  F.  route,"  said  June. 
"Why,  commerce,  whether  on  the  ocean  or  on  the  prairie,  has  its  own  channels.  There  was  a 
road  laid  out  by  Col.  Sibley,  in  1822,  from  Missouri  to  Santa  Fe.  It  was  called  the  Santa  Fe 
trail.  It  was  one  of  the  richest  highways  on  the  continent.  Ben  and  I  came  across  it  when  we 
were  galloping  over  Kansas, — an  old  weed-grown  road-bed,  fifty  feet  wide, — and  we  followed  it 
for  ten  miles,  just  to  see  the  old  fords,  and  imagine  the  ambuscades  where  the  teamsters  fought 
for  their  lives,  and  the  women  were  dragged  out  of  the  wagons  at  night  by  savages.  It  was  an 
early  necessity  of  commerce,  and  the  iron  trail  that  has  taken  its  place,  with  palace  cars,  heads 
for  the  same  objective  point,  and  for  hundreds  of  miles  follows  the  same  route. 

"  This  is  the  gold  region.  Directly  south  is  the  Decatur  District  on  the  south  fork  of  the 
Alamosa.  Not  more  than  five  miles  west  is  the  head  of  the  San  Juan  River,  and  within  a  radius 
of  fifty  miles  we  have  what  are,  without  doubt,  the  richest  mineral  lands  in  the  United  States. 
Geologists  tell  me  that  there  is  no  longer  any  doubt  that  the  whole  of  the  Sangre  de  Cristo 
and  Saguache  ranges,  are  filled  with  gold-bearing  quartz,  silver,  galena  and  coal.  One  thing  ap 
pears  to  be  beyond  -all  dispute,  and  that  is,  wherever  in  this  region  capital  has  employed 
skilled  labor,  and  the  proper  appliances  to  work  the  raw  material,  gold  has  been  turned  out  in 
paying  quantities.  One  does  not  here  encounter  the  lawless  hordes  which,  in  the  infancy  of  gold 
mining,  made  California  so  notorious.  The  era  of  nuggets  and  gulch-washing  has  passed.  The 
solitary  adventurer  finds  little  encouragement  here  other  than  the  chance  of  locating  a  claim,  and 
selling  it  afterward.  As  for  working  it  advantageously  single-handed,  that  is  an  impossibility. 
These  rich  seams  are  enormous  fissures,  almost  vertical  in  their  dip,  and  filled  with  half  a  hundred 
different  ores,  of  which  the  precious  metals  seldom  form  more  than  one-fourth  per  cent.  To 
work  them  requires  metallurgical  skill.  To  find  the  gold  is  one  thing,  to  extract  it  is  another. 
The  miner  was  once  a  finder.  The  whole  successful  force  of  this  country  is  engaged  in 
extracting. 

"  I  believe  it  is  a  law  that  obtains  everywhere,  that  Nature  only  yields  her  riches,  whether 
they  be  mineralogical  or  vegetable,  in  return  for  labor  expended.  There  is  reason  to  believe, 
on  purely  a  priori  grounds,  that  she  will  yield  more  in  this  country  than  in  any  other.  It  has 


41 

taken  about  twenty-five  years  of  teaching  to  get  this  lesson  well  into  our  heads.  The  first 
crusaders  who  rushed  across  the  continent  to  California  and  Pike's  Peak,  believed  in  luck. 
They  expected  to  pick  up  the  gold  before  somebody  else  found  it.  The  popular  idea  was  that 
Nature  had  smelted  and  assayed  and  run  it  into  bricks,  which  she  had  poked  away  among  her 
rocks  for  the  longest-winded  and  most  desperate  chaps  to  stumble  over.  You  can  follow  their 
trails  now  by  the  graves  and  the  bones  across  Kansas  and  Colorado.  They  rushed  into  the 
wilderness  and  helped  to  make  it  green  with  their  carcasses.  Then  came  the  era  of  speculation, 
of  mismanagement,  dishonesty  and  pecuniary  crimes.  Mines  were  bought  at  a  thousand  times 
their  value,  and  stocked  at  ten  times  the  purchase.  Incompetent  but  audacious  men  were  sent 
out  to  take  charge.  The  wrong  kind  of  mills  were  transported  at  enormous  expense,  and  they 
stand  to-day  all  over  the  country  wrecks  of  iron,  to  attest  the  stupendous  stupidity  of  the  people 
who  had  the  fever,  and  little  else.  Over  six  hundred  million  dollars,  I  am  told,  has  been  sub 
scribed  to  milling  and  mining  schemes  since  the  discovery  of  gold  in  California. 

"  About  60  per  cent,  of  this  sum  was  paid  in  cash — the  balance  remains  on  paper. 

"  Prospecting  for  claims  in  this  country  still  is  the  most  exciting  and  romantic  feature  of  the 
gold-hunting  business.  A  certain  class  of  men,  fitted  only  for  an  adventurous  and  nomadic  life, 
make  this  a  business,  and  there  are  many  strange  stories  told,  just  as  they  have  been  told  before, 
of  the  same  class  in  California,  of  men  discovering  rich  deposits,  staking  out  their  claims  and  then 
bartering  the  whole  thing  for  a  horse  or  a  pistol  in  a  debauch  attending  their  good  luck,  or  what 
is  still  more  common,  losing  the  claim  at  a  game  of  cards,  and  the  next  day  setting  out  to  discover 
another. 

"What  Colorado  needs  above  all  else  is  manufactures.  Her  mineral  resources  are  inexhaust 
ible.  Every  thing  of  solid  value  that  the  bowels  of  the  earth  produce  comes  to  the  surface  here, 
or  can  be  dug  out  with  the  smallest  amount  of  energy.  But  she  needs  organized  labor,  produc 
tive  capital,  resident  capitalists.  Since  the  Atchison,  Topeka  &  Santa  Fe  road  has  been  com 
pleted  to  Pueblo,  a  great  change  has  taken  place.  Milling  stock  and  agricultural  implements 
have  penetrated  almost  to  the  Mexican  frontier.  Engineers  and  millwrights  are  examining  the 
Rio  Grande  and  the  thousand  other  streams,  and  before  another  census  is  taken  the  whole  of  this 
country  will  have  taken  on  a  new  aspect. 

"  There  are  4,500  silver  mines  in  San  Juan. 

"As  you  go  westward  from  Pueblo  through  the  Wet  Mountain  Valley,  you  reach  Mosco  Pass 
in  the  Sangre  de  Cristo  Mountains,  and  about  seventy-five  miles  from  the  present  terminus  of  the 
Atchison,  Topeka  &  Santa  Fe  Railroad.  Here  are  the  celebrated  Sangre  de  Cristo  gold  quartz 
mines,  extending  in  a  belt  from  near  Mosco  Pass  forty  miles  north.  Gold  was  first  discovered 
on  this  range  in  November,  1874,  since  which  time  large  quantities  of  gold  quartz  have  been 
taken  out,  running  from  $50  to  $500  per  ton,  while  one  lead  has,  within  the  last  three  months, 
taken  out  gold  quartz  assaying  upward  of  $40,000  per  ton. 

"  In  the  San  Juan  country  there  are  thousands  of  mines  located,  and  to  be  located,  which  carry 
a  higher  grade  ore  than  the  Monte  Cristo,  which  might  be  worked  with  still  greater  profit,  if 
facilities  for  treatment  and  transportation  were  ample.  The  ores,  as  worked  in  San  Juan  last 
season,  run  from  $150  to  $2,000  per  ton.  The  highest  average  of  ores  in  one  run  of  Green  &  Go's 
smelter  at  Silverton,  San  Juan  county,  was  $849.44,  while  the  average  run  for  the  entire  season 
was  $220  per  ton.  No  silver  mining  country  in  the  world  can  make  such  a  showing.  The  usual 


cost  of  taking  out  ores  in  San  Juan  is  from  $8  to  $10  per  ton.  The  profits  may  be  less  than 
given  above  on  low  grade  ores  for  the  present,  but  at  no  distant  day  the  thousands  and  thou 
sands  of  veins  that  for  over  a  hundred  miles  interlace  and  weave  together  with  cords  of  silver 
the  main  mountain  ranges  in  San  Juan,  will 
attract  capital  and  labor,  and  the  develop 
ment  of  this  vast  treasure-house  will,  ere  long, 
be  known  as  one  of  the  chief  industries  of 
the  United  States.  Is  there  any  thing  else 
you  would  like  to  know  ?" 

"Yes,"  said  the  Governor,  "I'd  like  to 
know  where  you  got  all  this  information." 

Cries  of  "oh,  oh,"  and  "shame,"  from  the 
majority,  who  never  meant  to  divulge  the  fact 
that  she  got  it  from  Ben. 

"  There's  one  other  thing  I'd  like  to  say," 
remarked  June.     "  It's  this — we  can  readily  verify  my  statements  by  taking  one  of  Barlow  & 
Sanderson's  new  coaches  and  going  down  there."* 

This  was  a  clever  stroke.  The  Governor  had  a  mortal  dread  of  a  stage-coach  (I  believe  he 
had  been  overturned,  in  his  youth,  on  the  Alleghanies),  and  as  Ben  and  Bellamy  immediately 
seconded  the  suggestion,  he  had  to  acknowledge  that  the  statement  did  not  need  verifying. 

*  The  only  direct  railroad  route  into  the  San  Juan  country  is  by  the  Atchison,  Topeka  &  Santa  Fe  Railroad.  By 
taking  this  route  the  distance  is  shorter  than  any  other  line  by  143  miles.  Connections  with  this  road  are  made  from 
all  points  east  at  Kansas  City  or  Atchison. 

This  great  line  of  road  commences  at  both  of  the  above-named  points  on  the  Missouri  river  and  extends  684  miles, 
via  Topeka,  the  capital  of  Kansas,  thence  south-west  to  the  Arkansas  river,  and  thence  up  the  fertile  and  beautiful 
valley  of  the  Arkansas  to  Pueblo. 


43 


HOME    AGAIN. 

"  Behind  they  saw  the  snow-cloud  tossed 

By  many  an  icy  horn: 
Before,  warm  valleys  wood  embossed 
And  green  with  vines  and  corn." 

PIKE'S  PEAK  was  behind  us.  we  were  homeward  bound. 

"  I'm  going  to  make  a  book  of  it  all,"  said  June  to  me  in  the  cars,  when  the  other  members  of 
our  party  had  gone  off  to  smoke. 

She  had  accumulated  material  enough  certainly,  but  who  would  buy  it  when  made  into  a 
book? 

"  Buy  it  ?"  exclaimed  the  enthusiastic  girl — "  I'll  give  it  away ;  circulate  it  through  the  benevo 
lent  societies  of  England,  Ireland,  and  Scotland,  and  thus  do  something  for  my  race.  I  don't 
want  to  make  money  with  a  book.  I  can  make  enough  off  my  farm.  I  want  to  ?how  my  fellow- 
man  how  he  can  go  and  do  likewise. 

"So  long  as  land  is  given  away,  the  needy  ought  to  know  it;  especially  as  it  is  better  land 
than  that  which  commands  the  highest  price.  So  long  as  men  suffer  and  die  with  disease,  they 
ought  to  hear  of  a  land  where  they  can  live  and  grow  strong." 

"  Excuse  me,"  said  I,  "  but  aren't  you  a  little  extravagant  in  your  statements  ?" 

"No,  sir  "  (with  decision,  and  producing  her  note-book).  "  They  give  land  away  to  indus 
trious  people  in  Kansas  if  they  are  too  poor  to  buy  it.  Let  me  read  you  the  substance  of  the 
Timber-Tree  Law  of  Kansas:  'Any  person  who  is  twenty-one  years  of  age,  or  the  head  of  a 
family,  and  a  citizen  of  the  United  States,  can  get  title  to  forty,  eighty,  or  one  hundred  and  sixty 
acres  of  land  by  planting  one-fourth  of  the  land  in  timber-trees  not  more  than  twelve  feet  apart 
each  way.  If  they  take  one  hundred  and  sixty  acres,  they  will  be  required  to  plant  forty  acres, 
and  they  must  break  ten  acres  the  first  year,  ten  acres  the  second  year,  and  twenty  acres  the 
third  year  ;  and  plant  ten  acres  the  second  year,  ten  the  third  and  twenty  acres  the  fourth  year. 
They  must  make  oath  that  the  land  is  wanted  for  the  cultivation  of  timber  as  aforesaid.  They 
must  make  proof  within  eleven  years  that  they  have  cultivated  the  timber  at  least  eight  years.  The 
fees  will  be  about  $12.00  to  $15.00.  Many  claims  can  be  purchased  in  this  county  that  can  be 
paid  for  by  planting  timber  in  this  way.'  Now  as  for  salubriousness,  I  made  a  special  study  of  it 
in  Colorado,  and  I  interviewed  all  the  scientific  men  I  met.  The  conclusion  is  this  :  Colorado,  for 
weak  lungs,  bronchitis,  rheumatism,  gout  and  those  diseases  that  have  their  origin  in  malaria, 
is  a  certain  cure.  It  is  the  only  place  in  the  world  where  a  man  can  get  along  comfortably  with 
one  lung  so  long  as  he  has  got  two  legs.  All  forms  of  phthisis  are  benefited  by  the  air.  This 
is  not  a  random  statement;  I  make  it  from  actual  experience.  The  dry,  electric  air  of  such  places 
as  Manitou,  to  say  nothing  of  the  effects  of  the  waters,  has  made  it  the  resort  of  invalids  who 


44 

have  tried  Italy,  Minnesota,  Florida  and  Havana.  It  is  far  superior  in  its  relief  to  chronic 
bronchial  and  rheumatic  troubles  to  California,  because  here  one  escapes  the  cold,  wet  night- 
winds  from  the  ocean,  and  because  Manitou  lies  in  a  valley  amidst  the  mountains,  at  an  elevation 
of  six  thousand  three  hundred  and  seventy  feet,  and  is  unlike  the  resorts  of  Switzerland  in  its  ac 
cessibility  and  its  close  communication  with  a  country  covered  with  growing  crops  and  flourish 
ing  towns.  The  altitude  of  the  country  is  something  that  the  people  east  appear  to  have  very 
vague  notions  about. 

"They  forget  that  Colorado  is  in  the  clouds — a  kind  of  heaven  above  their  comprehension. 
Let  me  read  you  this  table  of  heights  : 

Denver  City 5>317  feet  above  the  sea. 

Colorado  Springs 5>72°  " 

Pueblo  Springs 4,400 

Canyon  City  Springs 4>7°°  "  " 

Manitou 6,370  "  " 

"  This  is  a  nice  sliding  scale  for  people  who  wish  to  adjust  their  lungs  to  a  particular  rarifica- 
tion.  And  then  if  they  desire  to  go  higher — as  men  always  do — we  have  adjacent  and  accessible : 

Pike's  Peak 14,336  feet  above  the  sea. 

Mount  Harvard 14*270 

Mount  Lincoln   I4>T45  " 

"  The  parks  in  these  mountain  ranges  are  elysiums  sheltered  from  storms,  open  to  the  sun, 
fed  with  mountain  streams  and  alive  with  game." 

"  What  kind  of  game  ?  "  I  asked,  anxious  to  see  if  this  encyclopedic  girl  had  gone  into  zool 
ogy  also. 


A  MOUNTAIN   COYOTE. 


"What  kinds!  Buffalo,  the  best  and  biggest  game  that  runs,  is  plentiful  on  the  plains, 
I  saw  no  less  than  three  hunting  parties  made  up  at  Pueblo.  Antelope,  coyote,  or  prairie 
wolves,  occasionally  the  gray  or  timber  wolf,  red  fox,  elk,  red-tailed  deer,  mountain  goat,  cinna 
mon  bears  and  even  grizzlies.  As  for  grouse  and  water-fowl,  they're  too  thick  to  bother  with,  as 
you  can  see." 

"  But  after  all,"  said  I,  "  Colorado  is  a  country  for  invalids.  I  cannot  see  how  it  is  going  to 
feed  itself.  It  is  true,  Pueblo  and  other  towns  have  made  irrigation  successful  on  a  limited  scale, 


45 


by  availing  themselves  of  the  streams  from  the  mountains,  but  that  plan,  picturesque  as  it  is, 
will  not  do  for  wheat-fields ;  besides,  the  country  will  be  equally  divided  between  invalids  and 
miners,  who  are  the  most  voracious  eaters  in  the  world." 

"  Well,"  replied  June,  "  I  said  something  like  that  to  a  Colorado  man.  I  took  down  his  reply ; 
here  it  is  :  '  You  air  perfekly  correk.  We  ain't  hankerin'  after  agriculter.  It  wouldn't  do  us 
much  good  ef  we  was,  with  that  air  paster  layin'  out  there  (sweeping 
his  brown  hand  broadly,  so  as  to  indicate  the  whole  of  Kansas).  Hev 
you  bin  over  that  patch  ?' 

"I  said,  'Yes.' 

"  '  Then  you've  been  in  the  gardin  of  men.     We  ain't  got  nuthin 
but  gardins  of  gods  fur  to  show.     But  I  calkerlate,  when  we  git  the 
gold  out  o'  natur's  bowels,  there  won't  much  milk  and  honey  run  to 
waste  for  the  want  of  a  market.     No,  marm;    it'll  climb  this  way. 
Why,    you    kin   talk  about  your  gardins — that    air    State's   a  regular 
cornicupio,  with  the  big  end  turned  this    way.      In   ten  year,  you'll 
find  the  human  race  coming  to  Colorady  to  live,  and  expectin'  Kansas  to 
help 'em  through.     It'll  do  it!      It'll  do  it! 
All  we  can  promise  'em  is  to  fill  their  pockets 
and  their  lungs.     The  folks  down  there'll  fill 
their   bellies,   you   bet,    and  have   somethin' 
over.' 

"  This  homely  speech  was  not  devoid  of 
sagacity.  The  prosperity  of  the  two  States  is, 
in  a  certain  sense,  guaranteed  by  their  abso 
lute  difference.  One  produces  and  the  other 
will  consume. 

"  The  amazing  richness  of  this  whole  mount 
ain  range,  not  alone  in  gold  and  silver,   but 
in  all  the  other  metals,  and  in  coal, — a  rich 
ness  that  grows  upon  the  sense  as  one  passes 
south, — convinces  me  that  a  measureless  com 
merce  is  yet  to  spring    up    with    the    South-  ROCKY  MOUNTAIN  QUAIL— WINTER  AND  SUMMER  PLUMAGE. 
west,  and  that  the  country  about  Santa  Fe,  once  the  objective  point  of  those  numberless  traders 
who  risked  their  lives  upon  the  plains,  will  sooner  or  later  be  one  of  the  busiest  domains  within 
the  borders  of  the  Union. 

'•  The  whole  of  the  tract  known  as  San  Juan  is  literally  alive  with  the  pioneer  adventurers 
who  seek  a  newly  opened  mining  country.  Every  one  is  digging,  and  every  one,  by  digging,  can 
make  money.  But  what  the  country  needs  is  an  open  road  to  the  capitalist,  the  machinist  and 
the  trader.  It  is  in  want  of  mills  and  markets  ;  these  the  railroad  alone  will  supply.  To  reach  San 
Juan  now,  the  traveler  and  the  miner  must  ride  for  a  hundred  miles,  at  least,  in  a  stage-coach, 
or  upon  a  mule.  With  such  primitive  means  of  access,  it  is  not  strange  that  the  tourist  seldom 
ventures  with  his  pencil  beyond  Canyon  Cily.  But  even  at  that  point,  h-3  observes  that  the 
Atchison,  Topeka  &  Santa  Fe  road,  already  surveyed  to  the  Rio  Grande,  will,  in  a  very  short 


46 

time,  connect  Mexico  with  Missouri,  closely  and  commercially,  as  the  early  Santa  Fe"  traders 
sought,  and  in  their  primitive  way,  did  indeed  connect  them. 

"  Nature,  no  less  than  traffic,  appears  to  have  indicated  this  route.  The  other  lines  which  run 
further  north,  look  primarily  to  California.  The  Santa  Fe  road  aims  at  Colorado  and  the  South 
west,  a  domain  which,  more  than  any  other,  is  at  this  moment  engaging  the  attention  of  the 
capitalist,  as  well  as  the  wonder-hunter  and  adventurer.  I  found  throughout  Colorado  a  genuine 
interest  in  this  railroad  which  is  to  be  the  great  channel  of  nourishment  and  of  emigration. 
Perhaps  I  should  say  that  a  ride  m  a  buggy  of  a  hundred  miles,  over  the  farming  country  in 
Kansas,  led  me  to  believe  that  the  producers  of  that  State  are  fully  aware  of  their  relations  to 
the  road,  whose  policy  has  been  from  the  outset  to  encourage  every  kind  of  industry  by  fair 
rates,  and  by  offering  every  reasonable  inducement  both  to  settlers  and  to  residents.* 

"  If  the  remaining  projected  route  to  the  South  is  completed  as  thoroughly  and  as  durably  as 
the  line  now  reaching  Pueblo,  the  West,  I  believe,  will  have  reason  to  feel  proud  of  one  high 
way  conscientiously  constructed  in  the  interest  of  the  community." 

After  this  copious  extract  from  her  book,  June  closed  her  album,  the  authoress  vanished,  and 
the  colloquial  woman  was  once  more  herself. 

"O  dear,"  she  said,  "there  is  Mrs.  Dolliper,  all  alone;  I'm  afraid  I've  neglected  her.  Ever 
since  that  Canyon  picnic,  she's  worn  a  crushed  aspect.  I  suppose  you  know  she  is  going  on  to 
New- York  with  us  ?" 

"No!*1 

'•  Yes  ;   Centennial,  ostensibly.     To  stay  with  us  and  talk  hemp,  really." 

"After  we  get  her  there,  we'll  coax  her  to  destroy  herself  by  going  to  Long  Branch." 

"  O  dear,  no;"  answered  June,  "  I'll  get  her  to  lend  me  ten  thousand  dollars,  and  we'll  come 
out  and  cultivate  that  farm.  I  think  she'll  do  it." 

"Then  you  do  not  want  to  push  her  down  a  canyon  ?" 

"No ;  if  she'll  help  me  get  my  book  out,  we'll  carry  her  down  in  a  palanquin." 

I  do  not  know  what  June  will  say  when  she  reads  this  book.  It's  so  inferior  to  hers — lacks 
the  fine  fancy,  the  poetic  gush,  and  as  she  would  say,  the  thoughts  that  burn,  and  words  that — 
what  d'ye  call  it  ? 

But  she  must  give  me  credit,  I  am  sure,  for  stealing  all  my  facts  and  figures  from  her. 

Since  these  pages  were  written,  the  Dolliper  has  been  to  the  Centennial,  and  June  has  been 
made  the  mistress  of  two  whole  sections  of  Western  land.  In  fact,  the  whole  family  is  healthy, 
and  wealthy,  and  wise.  And  it  owes  its  present  extraordinary  felicity  to  its  trip  to  Colorado. 

*  For  the  benefit  of  such  readers  as  may  desire  further  information  regarding  this  wonderful  country,  the 
following  list  of  officials  and  agents  of  the  A.  T.  &  S.  F.  R.  R.,  is  inserted,  any  one  of  whom  will  promptly 
respond  to  all  inquiries  by  letter  or  in  person  regarding  the  country,  the  road,  or  its  lands,  and  the  cost  of  reaching  this 
country  from  any  part  of  the  world.  Thos.  Nickerson,  President;  F.  H.  Peabody,  Vice-President;  Geo.  L.  Goodwin, 
Asst.  Treasurer,  all  at  Boston,  Mass.  C.  F.  Morse,  General  Supt.  ;  E.  Wilder,  Sec'y  &  Treasurer;  T.  J.  Ander 
son,  General  Passenger  Agent;  W.  F.  White,  General  Ticket  Agent;  M.  L.  Sargent,  General  Freight  Agent;  A.  S. 
Johnson,  Land  Commissioner ;  Arthur  Gorham,  Ass't.  Land  Commissioner;  C.  B.  Schmidt,  General  Foreign  Agent, 
allofTopeka,  Kansas.  L.  H.  Nutting,  General  Eastern  Agent,  239  Broadway,  opposite  Post  Office,  New- York; 
M.  Solomon,  N.  W.  Agent,  57  Dearborn  St.,  Chicago,  111.;  S.  B.  Hynes,  General  Agent,  and  Eli  Lewis,  General 
Traveling  Agent,  102  N.  4th  St.,  St.  Louis,  Mo. ;  N.  R.  Warwick,  General  Southern  Agent,  138  Vine  St.,  Cincinnati, 
Ohio.  Address  or  call  on  the  agent  nearest  you. 


